gettext: Flat and Non-Flat

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1 13.1 Flat or Non-Flat Directory Structures
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1    Some free software packages are distributed as ‘tar’ files which
1 unpack in a single directory, these are said to be "flat" distributions.
1 Other free software packages have a one level hierarchy of
1 subdirectories, using for example a subdirectory named ‘doc/’ for the
1 Texinfo manual and man pages, another called ‘lib/’ for holding
1 functions meant to replace or complement C libraries, and a subdirectory
1 ‘src/’ for holding the proper sources for the package.  These other
1 distributions are said to be "non-flat".
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1    We cannot say much about flat distributions.  A flat directory
1 structure has the disadvantage of increasing the difficulty of updating
1 to a new version of GNU ‘gettext’.  Also, if you have many PO files,
1 this could somewhat pollute your single directory.  Also, GNU
1 ‘gettext’’s libintl sources consist of C sources, shell scripts, ‘sed’
1 scripts and complicated Makefile rules, which don’t fit well into an
1 existing flat structure.  For these reasons, we recommend to use
1 non-flat approach in this case as well.
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1    Maybe because GNU ‘gettext’ itself has a non-flat structure, we have
1 more experience with this approach, and this is what will be described
1 in the remaining of this chapter.  Some maintainers might use this as an
1 opportunity to unflatten their package structure.
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