Re: Updating po files on make dist

[Sven Neumann <sven gimp org>]

Hi,

Christian Rose <menthos@gnome.org> writes:

> There's one situation when updating po files in cvs as a result of make
> dist is beneficial, and that is when the module has many messages and
> many old (not recently updated) translations. Then regenerating all po
> files and putting these back into cvs can save some substantial build
> time for those building from cvs.
> 
> In practice this should rarely be needed though. Few modules have that
> many messages and that many old translations to warrant this. The
> example that comes to mind was that this was the case for Nautilus once,
> and I can imagine that Evolution also occasionally needs this with its
> more than 6000 messages. In such cases, announcing in advance to
> gnome-i18n@gnome.org that the po files in cvs will be touched at release
> time is appreciated.

GIMP is such a case as well. There are unfortunately quite a few
unmaintained translations and there are lots of messages. I think that
it is a good thing that these files get updated on 'make dist'. That
way they don't get too far out of sync.

If translations are properly maintained, there shouldn't be any
problems from the current 'make dist' behaviour. The changes should be
minimal and easy to merge. If there's a conflict, the translator can
simply go back one revision and merge his/her changes there.

IMO 'make dist' is doing the right thing here and it shouldn't be
changed. If a translator doesn't know CVS well enough and does not
know to handle a merge conflict, I can offer a helping hand, just mail
me.


Sven