Normally, if po4a isn't available, autogen.sh will return
with non-zero exit status. The option --no-po4a can be useful
when one knows that po4a isn't available but wants autogen.sh
to still return with zero exit status.
The dependency on po4a is optional. It's never required to install
the translated man pages when xz is built from a release tarball.
If po4a is missing when building from xz.git, the translated man
pages won't be generated but otherwise the build will work normally.
The translations are only updated automatically by autogen.sh and
by "make mydist". This makes it easy to keep po4a as an optional
dependency and ensures that I won't forget to put updated
translations to a release tarball.
The translated man pages aren't installed if --disable-nls is used.
The installation of translated man pages abuses Automake internals
by calling "install-man" with redefined dist_man_MANS and man_MANS.
This makes the hairy script code slightly less hairy. If it breaks
some day, this code needs to be fixed; don't blame Automake developers.
Also, this adds more quotes to the existing shell script code in
the Makefile.am "-hook"s.
Lasse Collin
Jim Meyering