Re: translators tried hard but...

[Shaun McCance <shaunm gnome org>]

I'm taking this to desktop-devel-list, because this is important, and
maintainers need to be in on this.

On Tue, 2004-09-21 at 20:35 -0300, Nikos Charonitakis wrote: 
> According to the schedule translators could commit until early days of
> Septemper but as i can see some applications were released for Gnome
> 2.8 with build dates 30 of june or ealier (gnome-terminal, gucharmap).
> Maintainers should build these packages  again in order to include
> latest updated   translations.

and...

On Wed, 2004-09-22 at 14:20 +0200, Danilo Šegan wrote: 
> gnome-i18n is not the right place to request tarball releases.  Go to
> the maintainers and developers, they should be able to help.  Anyone
> can ask a maintainer to do a release, and if you notice that some
> releases are missing, it's best if *you* do it (since we're all
> volunteering and dedicating our free time to the project).  If you
> can't do it for some reason, then it's appropriate to let gnome-i18n
> and ask someone to do it for you.
> 
> Today at 9:36, Mugurel Tudor wrote:
> >
> > *All* the tarballs should be created on the release day. 
> 
> That's impossible: tarballs need to be tested, maintainers might be
> unavailable, etc.
> 
> > Otherwise, please be more specific about the period that we should
> > commit our translations. 
> 
> We can't be specific about it because we don't know.  But we're
> pretty close.  Any translations getting in prior to RC1 (2 weeks
> prior to the final release) SHOULD be included, but it usually
> extends to 1 week prior to release.  Most commonly though, it's 3-4
> days prior to release.
> 
> > Because we are not translating for statistics, we are
> > translating for the people. Thank you.
> 
> Exactly.  But we're also working with *people* who do the releases.
> We need to remind them politely (and then remind them again) that we
> need releases, even though there might be no changes apart from
> translation updates.  If that doesn't work (busy maintainer, doesn't
> like the idea, etc.), we need to let other developers know, and
> perhaps someone will be able to lend a hand.
> 
> Alternative approach is to ask release-team to have available
> "helpers" who could do releases when nobody else is around.  But,
> this should not be discussed here, since it affects the entire Gnome
> project.

This affects the documentation team as well as the translation teams.
Part of having your project in the desktop release is agreeing to work
with the rest of the Gnome teams.  In particular, it means you'll work
with the translation and documentation teams, and follow the release
schedule.

Even if no code changes have been made, translation and documentation
work is very likely still going on.  If these have been updated since
the last release, then a new tarball should be rolled for the stable
releases.  This includes our scheduled stable point releases.  Best
case, the release should be made no more than a day or two before the
scheduled release date.

There are always people willing to roll releases for you if you have to
be out of town or something.  I've seen plenty of maintainers ask others
to roll a release for them.  But people can't just jump in and make a
release without knowing the maintainer isn't able to.  Otherwise, you
end up with Random Person A rolling 2.8.3, and then having a 2.8.3 from
the maintainer five minutes later.

I know I'm no example for making point releases on time.  I missed about
half of the 2.5.x development releases, and I'm pretty sure I missed one
of the later 2.6.x releases.  And I've made quite a few releases a day
late.  I'm not trying to flame anybody, just raise awareness.

--
Shaun