I tried the extract.php file, but that gave me 3 .pot files general.pot, onlinestatus-module.pot and messengers-inc-php.pot. The Translator's guide suggest to have one modulename.pot file in the module/po folder.
AFAIK the strings in general.pot should not be included in your pot file as they are also in Drupal core. It's to avoid different translations of the same strings.
/Hannes (zoo33)