git sh-i18n

Internationalization plumbing for shell-based commands.

🎯 What & why

Internal i18n helper: the gettext wrapper Git's shell-script subcommands use to emit translated messages. Effectively a portable shim around gettext.sh.

🧠 Mental model

A tiny shell library, not really a command. Sourced or invoked by Git's .sh plumbing to translate user-facing strings and substitute variables, falling back to passthrough when gettext isn't built in.

🛠️ Synopsis

git sh-i18n--envsubst <format>
# More commonly sourced by other scripts:
. "$(git --exec-path)/git-sh-i18n"
gettext "untranslated string"
eval_gettext "Hello, \$user"

🎚️ Switches & options

Flag	What it does
`--envsubst`	Substitute `$VAR` references in the supplied format string from the environment
`(sourced) gettext`	Translate a literal string via the message catalog
`(sourced) eval_gettext`	Translate, then expand `$var` references safely
`(sourced) eval_ngettext`	Plural form of eval_gettext, picks singular/plural by count

💡 Use cases

Translating prompts in shell-built porcelain like older git stash or git rebase scripts
Providing a consistent fallback when Git is built without NLS support
Reference reading when adding i18n to a custom shell-based git extension
Diagnosing why a translated message did or did not appear under a given LANG

🧪 Examples

Source it inside a shell script

. "$(git --exec-path)/git-sh-i18n"

Translate a literal string

gettext 'Switched to a new branch'

Variable-substituting translation

user=alice; eval_gettext 'Hello, \$user'

Direct envsubst invocation

name=world git sh-i18n--envsubst 'Hello, $name'

🎓 Recommendations

Don't invoke this directly - source it from a shell script if you really need i18n in a Git extension.
Use eval_gettext instead of gettext whenever you need variable interpolation; it's the only safe way.
If you're writing new tooling, prefer C or a high-level language with proper gettext bindings; the shell layer is legacy.

🪤 Common pitfalls

Without NLS-enabled Git, every gettext call is a passthrough - silently masking missing translations.
Single-quote your format strings so the shell does not expand $var before eval_gettext sees it.
Most modern Git porcelain is C now; this layer only matters for the dwindling shell-script commands.

🔗 Related modules

📝 Quiz

Hit each option, then Check answers. Score is recorded; Next is always open.