Hi Ævar,

On Mon, 22 Oct 2018, Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason wrote:

> So I think the only reason to keep it [GETTEXT_POISON] compile-time is
> performance, but I don't think that matters. It's not like we're
> printing gigabytes of _() formatted output. Everything where formatting
> matters is plumbing which doesn't use this API. These messages are
> always for human consumption.

Well, let's make sure that your impression is correct before going too
far. I, too, had the impression that gettext cannot possibly be expensive,
especifally in Git for Windows' settings, where we do not even ship
translations. Yet see the commit message of cc5e1bf99247 (gettext: avoid
initialization if the locale dir is not present, 2018-04-21):

	The runtime of a simple `git.exe version` call on Windows is
	currently dominated by the gettext setup, adding a whopping ~150ms
	to the ~210ms total.

I would be in favor of your change to make this a runtime option, of
course, as long as it does not affect performance greatly (in particular
on Windows, where we fight an uphill battle to make Git faster).

Ciao,
Dscho