Re: msgmerge and the handling of obsolete entries (Re: Updating po files on make dist)

[Bruno Haible <bruno clisp org>]

Karl Eichwalder wrote:

> morphing of obsolete, but valid translations can happen; once a
> obsolete message is used for a (fuzzy) match it will go away from the
> .po file silently:
> 
> ke@tux:/tmp> cat test.de.po
> #~ msgid "the message 'foo'"
> #~ msgstr "die Meldung 'foo'"
> 
> ke@tux:/tmp> cat test.pot
> msgid "the message"
> msgstr ""
> 
> ke@tux:/tmp> msgmerge -o - test.de.po test.pot 
> .. done.
> #, fuzzy
> msgid "the message"
> msgstr "die Meldung 'foo'"
> 
> Bug or feature, I don't know ;)  I'm incline to believe 'msgmerge' must
> not throw away any obsolete entry.

The obsolete entries are not meant as a general translation memory mechanism, like
the Oracle database used by the Sun people. Nor should they accumulate eternally
without ever being removed. It's merely to work around the fact that developers
sometimes undo some changes they made earlier, thus possibly reintroducing a
messages they threw away before.

Bruno