"Jeremy C. Reed" <reed@reedmedia.net> writes:

> Anyways, my point is that I never hit that libiconv package
> failure problem on my Linux systems.

I don't see it on RHEL3.  I mentioned that it could be because i
don't have any gettext stuff in the base system on Debian.  As
soon as gettext-lib is installed, the problem goes away.  You
only see it if you 'bmake install' from devel/gettext without
gettext-lib already installed (and probably with no gettext in
base).

> I wonder why others using Linux are forced to use the libiconv
> package, because I never am.

No one is forced to use the libiconv package on Linux; as a
matter of fact, it refuses to install (as it should).

> I will need to look closer, maybe it is because that check is
> in the .  if ${PREFER.iconv} == "native"

The libiconv package is functioning properly.  It is
gettext-lib's (incestuous and redundant, i say) iconv detecting
code that is broken.  I argue for removing those bits from
gettext-lib.

--  
Eric Gillespie <*> epg@pretzelnet.org