Translations: String freezes, CVS converging, Packaging

[Jeremy Katz]

On Wed, 2007-03-07 at 18:31 +0100, Thomas Canniot wrote:
> Le mercredi 07 mars 2007 à 11:06 -0500, Jeremy Katz a écrit :
> [snip]
> > > ## Packaging translations
> > > 
> > > One final plan (and probably the one that needs most discussion) is about
> > > changing the way we package translations. Right now PO files live inside the
> > > application and are packaged there (GNOME-style). The plan is to move the PO
> > > files in to their own directory and distinct package [4] (KDE-style langpacks).
> > > 
> > >   [4]: http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/L10N/Projects/TranslationsPackage
> > 
> > I'm very very very very strongly opposed to doing this.  It's a nitemare
> > from an installation point of view and also from a space point of view.
> > The packages which do translations like this require absolutely horrible
> > hacks within our software management stack to even have a *chance* of
> > people getting the translations installed for their apps.  Contrast to
> > the apps which include the translations in the package... install the
> > package and voila!, you have the translations for it.
> 
> [snip]
> 
> Ok it may be a nightmare but it tries to solve the following problem:
> when a translation is made too late after the creation of the new
> package before an update (let's say during the life cycle of the
> distro), it has very little chance to be included before the next
> release of fedora. Generally, the answer is "Thanks, I push your
> translation in the NEXT rebuild" (in other words, "Too late guy, wait
> some more weeks or months). Fedora upstream software are not being
> repackaged every day and pushed as updates. By maintaining our own
> langpack, translators can translate whenever they want and especially
> whenever they can.

By the same argument, I should get to change strings whenever I
want/whenever I can and not stick to a freeze schedule.

We have to get to where we do a better job of sticking to our schedules
-- both for freezes to strings so that translators can have adequate
time for translating the software and hitting a "translations completed,
do a rebuild" milestone.  It's a growing pain but I don't see how we
sanely scale things otherwise.

The third part is probably coming up with a good way of coordinating
rebuilds of things which we host, maintain and are the upstream for so
that translation updates can go out in a more timely fashion.

Jeremy