Re: gnome-applets string freeze breakage

[Christian Rose <menthos gnome org>]

fre 2005-04-01 klockan 01:14 +0800 skrev Davyd Madeley:
> On Thu, Mar 31, 2005 at 11:45:19AM -0500, Ryan Lortie wrote:
> > As per bug #171855, I was told by the maintainer of the module to
> > back-port my patch to STABLE.
> 
> I approved this backport to gnome-2-10 as it actually fixes two
> serious errors in GWeather 2.10. One is related to translations of
> city and location names, and the other was a serious memory leak.
> 
> > Also, as per the bug, it is noted that this is a message that the end
> > user will never see.
> 
> > > 	#: gweather/gweather-pref.c:361
> > > 	msgid ""
> > > 	"Failed to load the Locations XML database.  Please report this as a bug."
> 
> While Ryan should have informed the i18n teams that he had added a
> string, it's partially my fault for not informing him he had to do
> so (or simply doing it myself).

Not only should translators have been informed; you should also have
requested advance approval for breaking the freeze (see
http://developer.gnome.org/dotplan/tasks.html#ApprovingFreezeBreaks).
GNOME 2.10 is in string freeze, and will forever continue to be so.
Nothing has changed in that respect.


> The priority of this string is very
> low (ie. you should never see it), it was added because in the
> current tree it would simply fail silently. We were also in a rush
> to get it backported and to try and get some testing before next
> week's release.

What I don't understand is why this fix (the added error message) is
considered important enough to be in the same patch as the memory leak
and location name i18n fixes.
If this error message is not at all important, then why is it in the
same patch with a lot of crucial fixes? It appears that this situation
would have been more manageable if the fixes were seperated into several
patches that could have been prioritized differently. To me, it seems
like the only reason this added error message was backported at all was
because it happened to be in the same patch.


> If this is unacceptable, then we will remove the string. However, I
> hope that you can see why we think this patch is in fact quite
> important, and that you have pity on us for only being mortal.

I'm sorry, but I haven't been convinced that this added error message is
essential to have in the gnome-2-10 branch. I certainly understand and
share your opinion about the other fixes in the patch; the memory leak
fixes and the translated names fixes. Those do indeed fix important bugs
and can be classified as essential.

But both of you claim that the error message part of the patch is very
low priority, and that the error message is hardly ever used. Then I
also fail to see why it needs to be part of the backport. Unless you can
convince me otherwise, I still think this part of the patch should be
reverted on the gnome-2-10 branch.


Christian