Handling Locale Files
If the package uses gettext for translations, add
BuildRequires: gettext
If you don't, your package could fail to generate translation files in the buildroot.
For Qt-based packages using Linguist tool chain, the localisation utilities are included in the qt-devel package.
Fedora includes an rpm macro called %find_lang. This macro will locate all of the locale files that belong to your package (by name), and put this list in a file. You can then use that file to include all of the locales. %find_lang should be run in the %install section of your spec file, after all of the files have been installed into the buildroot. The correct syntax for %find_lang is usually:
%find_lang %{name}
In some cases, the application may use a different "name" for its locales. You may have to look at the locale files and see what they are named. If they are named myapp.mo, then you will need to pass myapp to %find_lang instead of %{name}.
After %find_lang is run, it will generate a file in the active directory (by default, the top level of the source dir). This file will be named based on what you passed as the option to the %find_lang macro. Usually, it will be named %{name}.lang. You should then use this file in the %files list to include the locales detected by %find_lang. To do this, you should include it with the -f parameter to %files.
%files -f %{name}.lang
%{_bindir}/foobar
...
If you are already using the -f parameter for the %files section where the locales should live, just append the contents of %{name}.lang to the end of the file that you are already using with -f. (Note that only one file may be used with %files -f.)
Here is an example of proper usage of %find_lang, in foo.spec:
...
%prep
%setup -q
%build
%configure --with-cheese
make %{?_smp_mflags}
%install
make DESTDIR=%{buildroot} install
%find_lang %{name}
%files -f %{name}.lang
%doc LICENSE README
%{_bindir}/foobar
%changelog
* Thu May 4 2006 Tom "spot" Callaway <tcallawa@redhat.com> 0.1-1
- sample spec that uses %%find_lang
Note that %find_lang by default searches for gettext locales, but it can also handle Qt translations, localised manpages and help files - to see all the options, run /usr/lib/rpm/find-lang.sh in the terminal.