To build an internationalized shell script I'll need to compile multiple .mo language files and distribute them along side the script itself. For shell scripts

To build an internationalized shell script I'll need to compile multiple .mo language files and distribute them along side the script itself. For shell scripts part of a large system, that's probably fine. For small scripts, that's not very practical. You are not only adding a compilation step, you're also requiring distribution of multiple files. That's a pain. It just kind of kills the convenience of a simple shell script. I would probably end up writing a makefile to manage all of this and at that point I am only a hop skip and jump away from using a compiled language instead of shell.