gettext.h: add parentheses around N_ expansion if supported

The gettext N_ macro is used to mark strings for translation without actually translating them. At runtime the string is expected to be passed to the gettext API for translation. If two N_ macro invocations appear next to each other with only whitespace (or nothing at all) between them, the two separate strings will be marked for translation, but the preprocessor will then silently combine the strings into one and at runtime the string passed to gettext will not match the strings that were translated so no translation will actually occur. Avoid this by adding parentheses around the expansion of the N_ macro so that instead of ending up with two adjacent strings that are then combined by the preprocessor, two adjacent strings surrounded by parentheses result instead which causes a compile error so the mistake can be quickly found and corrected. However, since these string literals are typically assigned to static variables and not all compilers support parenthesized string literal assignments, allow this to be controlled by the Makefile with the default only enabled when the compiler is known to support the syntax. For now only __GNUC__ enables this by default which covers both gcc and clang which should result in early detection of any adjacent N_ macros. Although the necessary tests make the affected files a bit less elegant, the benefit of avoiding propagation of a translation- marking error to all the translation teams thus creating extra work for them when the error is eventually detected and fixed would seem to outweigh the minor inelegance the additional configuration tests introduce. Helped-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com> Signed-off-by: Kyle J. McKay <mackyle@gmail.com> Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>

Kyle J. McKay committed Jan 11, 2015 at 12:09 UTC 290c8e7a3fe182ff64c3e6b76fbbbc6dcff4727c
3 files changed +45
Makefile
+17
@@ -339,6 +339,15 @@ all::
339 # return NULL when it receives a bogus time_t.
340 #
341 # Define HAVE_CLOCK_GETTIME if your platform has clock_gettime in librt.
342 +#
343 +# Define USE_PARENS_AROUND_GETTEXT_N to "yes" if your compiler happily
344 +# compiles the following initialization:
345 +#
346 +# static const char s[] = ("FOO");
347 +#
348 +# and define it to "no" if you need to remove the parentheses () around the
349 +# constant. The default is "auto", which means to use parentheses if your
350 +# compiler is detected to support it.
351
352 GIT-VERSION-FILE: FORCE
353 @$(SHELL_PATH) ./GIT-VERSION-GEN
@@ -946,6 +955,14 @@ ifneq (,$(SOCKLEN_T))
955 BASIC_CFLAGS += -Dsocklen_t=$(SOCKLEN_T)
956 endif
957
958 +ifeq (yes,$(USE_PARENS_AROUND_GETTEXT_N))
959 + BASIC_CFLAGS += -DUSE_PARENS_AROUND_GETTEXT_N=1
960 +else
961 +ifeq (no,$(USE_PARENS_AROUND_GETTEXT_N))
962 + BASIC_CFLAGS += -DUSE_PARENS_AROUND_GETTEXT_N=0
963 +endif
964 +endif
965 +
966 ifeq ($(uname_S),Darwin)
967 ifndef NO_FINK
968 ifeq ($(shell test -d /sw/lib && echo y),y)
gettext.h
+24
@@ -63,6 +63,30 @@ const char *Q_(const char *msgid, const char *plu, unsigned long n)
63 }
64
65 /* Mark msgid for translation but do not translate it. */
66 +#if !USE_PARENS_AROUND_GETTEXT_N
67 #define N_(msgid) msgid
68 +#else
69 +/*
70 + * Strictly speaking, this will lead to invalid C when
71 + * used this way:
72 + * static const char s[] = N_("FOO");
73 + * which will expand to
74 + * static const char s[] = ("FOO");
75 + * and in valid C, the initializer on the right hand side must
76 + * be without the parentheses. But many compilers do accept it
77 + * as a language extension and it will allow us to catch mistakes
78 + * like:
79 + * static const char *msgs[] = {
80 + * N_("one")
81 + * N_("two"),
82 + * N_("three"),
83 + * NULL
84 + * };
85 + * (notice the missing comma on one of the lines) by forcing
86 + * a compilation error, because parenthesised ("one") ("two")
87 + * will not get silently turned into ("onetwo").
88 + */
89 +#define N_(msgid) (msgid)
90 +#endif
91
92 #endif
git-compat-util.h
+4
@@ -828,4 +828,8 @@ struct tm *git_gmtime_r(const time_t *, struct tm *);
828 #define gmtime_r git_gmtime_r
829 #endif
830
831 +#if !defined(USE_PARENS_AROUND_GETTEXT_N) && defined(__GNUC__)
832 +#define USE_PARENS_AROUND_GETTEXT_N 1
833 +#endif
834 +
835 #endif