ubuntu-translations-coordinators team mailing list archive

[David Planella <david.planella@xxxxxxxxxx>]

El dj 28 de 10 de 2010 a les 18:25 -0400, en/na Martin Pitt va escriure:
> Hello all,
> 
> Jeroen Vermeulen [2010-10-26 13:29 +0700]:
> > All this makes me wonder if delta language packs still make sense.
> > I don't think the code that produces them "knows" about message
> > sharing, so there may be tons of changes that don't make it out to
> > the users until the next full language pack.
> 
> I don't quite get what you mean here, but indeed I noticed that update
> tarballs get huge very quickly. Obviously we don't get half of our
> strings changed or added within a week after doing a base pack, so I
> wonder whether the po files contain some noise (like date stamps)
> which make the delta tarballs explode.
> 
> I still think there's value in the delta langpacks, since it's (if it
> works) a lot less to build, upload, and download for users. So if we
> could fix those to be as small as they used to, I'd certainly prefer
> that.
> 

I think what Jeroen was trying to say was not whether the delta language
packs are useful per se, but rather if we are taking full advantage of
all their benefits. Let me explain:

Right now, due to message sharing, a translator can translate
software-center in Maverick and Lucid will get translated automatically.

In theory, the next Lucid delta language pack should get all those new
translations, but the truth is that the code that produces the export
does not know about message sharing, as Jeroen was pointing out, so it
does not consider the new software-center translations coming from
Maverick as "changed" and thus are not exported.

They will only be exported in the next full export, which will get to
users in the next full language pack.

I'm not sure what the best solution for this is, but I would not go as
far as to question the need for delta language packs at this point,
since they still are a good means to deliver the translations done
explicitly for a given release (i.e. not as a result of message
sharing).

In any case, Jeroen, Danilo, Henning: would that be a difficult one to
fix? Is there a bug for this already (if not, I'll be happy to file
one)?

> If the delta exports are hard to fix for some reason, then we could
> just always do full exports and full -base langpack builds indeed.
> 
> > Arne was thinking of letting users get them straight from Launchpad.
> 
> This comes with a lot of drawbacks, though. We'd basically need to
> reinvent mirrors (we can't possibly allow 12 million users to directly
> download from launchpad), distribution channels (archives), and
> install systems (dpkg/apt), and in the end we would have pretty much
> the same system as we already have today. Also, we need to have some
> QA stage in between.
> 
> Martin

Going back to the Maverick language packs, Henning was telling us in a
previous e-mail that the translations export cron job from Launchpad had
already been set according to the "Launchpad Exports" column in the
schedule [1].

Martin, in order for the schedule to be up to date do you think you
could update the build part according to the "Language Pack Build"
column?

This would mean:
      * Updating the days when builds happen according to the schedule
      * Activating the Maverick PPA builds
      * Setting up the Natty builds, to be started on Alpha 1
      * Activating the Lucid PPA builds
      * Dropping the Karmic PPA builds from the schedule

Thanks!

Regards,
David.

[1] https://dev.launchpad.net/Translations/LanguagePackSchedule

-- 
David Planella
Ubuntu Translations Coordinator
www.ubuntu.com / www.davidplanella.wordpress.com
www.identi.ca/dplanella / www.twitter.com/dplanella

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