Re: git submodules vs translators

[Ankit Patel <ankit redhat com>]

On 06/28/2013 05:31 AM, Colin Walters wrote:
> The use of git submodules in GNOME is growing - there's libgd,
> egg-list-box, and my own libgsystem, among others.  Broadly speaking,
> I think that's a good thing.  They offer a reasonable set of
> tradeoffs compared to "copylibs" like the old libegg model.
>
> However, git submodules are easy to screw up unless everyone
> committing to the repository is aware of how they work.  This
> collides badly with our current translation system where many
> translators commit directly to git, resulting in commits like this
> one:
>
> https://git.gnome.org/browse/gnome-control-center/commit/?id=c87483acb4cce36ffad215396dbaa4cea801c970
>
>  That commit reverted two submodules.  The gnome-ostree continuous
> integration system made it fairly obvious when I looked at the build
> error, but two things should happen:
>
> 1) Translators:  Ensure you run "git submodule update --init" after
> every git pull. 2) We need some sort of sanity check in a pre-receive
> hook.  Something like "commits whose subjects match the regexp
> "Update.*translation" are rejected if they modify submodules. Or even
> stronger, one idea is that modules can opt-in to having a file
> "submodule-check" which must change content for commits which update
> submodules.  The downside of that is it would conflict on branch
> merges, but then again, the submodules would anyways.
>
> Any other thoughts?

We are translators. We like to focus on translations. Tools or systems
that ease the translation process for us would always be beneficial to
not just translators community but also to the developers community
seeking to ensure that their source code is not mistakenly being messed
up by anyone unnecessarily.

Having CVS earlier, we were able to checkout just the individual PO
files we require and translate and submit them back easily. But later as
majority agreed the decision to move to GIT came in. Many of us have
adapted to work with git stuff, no doubt! But bringing easiest approach
in this age of World Wide Web would be the best thing to do now.

Communities like XFCE, Fedora, LibreOffice, Mozilla, etc are considering
the web based systems to manage their translation efforts. We might want
to evaluate the options available.

Thanks,
--
Regards,
Ankit Patel
http://www.ankit644.com/
http://fuelproject.org/gilt2013/index