Re: We need new packaging solutions (was: Re: We need a new i18n doc build system)

[Chris Lyttle <chris wilddev net>]

On Sat, 2003-08-09 at 11:54, Christian Neumair wrote:
> - Ship all in one package (basic + i18n + doc C + doc DOC_ALL_LINGUAS) -
> CURRENT SOLUTION
> - Ship docs separate (basic + i18n; doc C + doc DOC_ALL_LINGUAS)
> - Ship only C docs bundled, i18n and i18n'ized docs in one extra package
> (basic + doc C; i18n + doc DOC_ALL_LINGUAS)
> - Separate out everything (basic; i18n; doc C; doc DOC_ALL_LINGUAS)
> - Separate out translation of all core packages, ship i18n + i18n doc
> separate (basic + doc C; gnome-i18n-LANG; gnome-doc-LANG).
> - Separate out translation of all core packages, ship i18n + i18n doc
> together (basic + doc C; gnome-i18n-LANG + gnome-doc-LANG).
> 
> I don't know what the best solution is, but separating out docs and i18n
> packages seems to be most reasonable way to me. Separating our the docs
> from the rest of the user-visible strings (doc X; i18n X) is in my
> opinion braindead, since average users expect help buttons + docs to
> work. Of course bundling everything in one GNOME package breaks our
> completely modularized concept and forces each of the maintainers to do
> tradeoffs, since the extra packages need to be released totally
> coordinated, but for the sake of bandwidth (software definitly won't get
> smaller) it seems to be a good solution. We'd have to force everyone to
> release nano releases only until docs are sync'ed, e.g.
> package-X-2.5.3.[i++]. package-X-2.5.[i++].0 releases would have to be
> done together with the entire desktop and have the same version, even
> for unstable versions, since docs + i18n files would have to be synced
> up.
> Another solution would be bundoing package-X-i18n-LANG and
> package-X-doc-LANG packages + 1 GNOME metapackage-i18n-LANG + 1 GNOME
> metapackage-doc-LANG which depends on all of them. This would still
> enable us to be completely modular, but add dozens of new packages.
> I think the debian guys prefer the latter - me, too.
> Suggestions, comments, flamebaits? That's fine by me :)
> 
> regs,
>  Chris
> 
> PS: Is this the right mailing lists for such ideas?
> 

Yep, it is. We at the GnuCash project decided for our 1.8.0 release to
separate out both the docs and the translated docs from the main release
package (as gnucash-docs) but leaving the translated strings and C docs
in the main package. This has caused some initial confusion for users
(mostly people popping up asking why our html help doesn't work) but it
has worked pretty well for its purpose which was to reduce the size of
the main package downloads and to enable different timetables for docs
releases to the main package. I haven't yet figured out how to encourage
translators to work on translating the docs as well as the strings, but
that's another story.

Chris
-- 
RedHat Certified Engineer #807302549405490.
Checkpoint Certified Security Expert 2000 & NG
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