Comment 7 for bug 903340

Thanks for this report and proposed patch.

However, I wouldn't want to introduce the logic to watch for changes like these: if project maintainer is using features implemented only in intltool 0.50 (eg. the aforementioned rule requires such an update), I fully expect them to ask for users to install that version of intltool scripts on their systems. Fixing this problem was important for more than one reason, and keeping the old behaviour in for those without the required intltool version is suboptimal at best and a security risk at worst.

I am happy to hear about any suggestions on how to better document this in the future and make it an expected change, if that's ever possible. A jump from 0.4* to 0.50 was done to indicate that we're talking about significant set of changes. Also, one needs not repeat that intltool is poorly documented: it's something we'd love to get some help with.

Basically, would just adding something like the following to the release notes have helped prevent the issue:

"Use of INTLTOOL_XML_NOMERGE_RULE and intltool 0.50 by maintainers will require every user of the software to have intltool 0.50 or later installed when building the package."

If you've got something else on your mind, please let me know.