Re: Mistakes in doc translations

[Shaun McCance <shaunm gnome org>]

On Tue, 2012-04-17 at 09:25 +0200, bruno wrote:
> Le lundi 16 avril 2012 à 18:34 -0400, Shaun McCance a écrit : 
> > This is the workflow that usually leads to these kinds of problems:
> > 
> > 1) Get the file from git and copy it to some folder somewhere.
> > 2) Edit the file.
> > 3) Update your git repository, or clone it fresh.
> > 4) Copy the file from some folder into the repository and commit.
> > 
> Thank you for your very clear answer.
> 
> This is exactly my workflow. I follow this guideline :
> http://live.gnome.org/TranslationProject/GitHowTo

The workflow on that wiki page is *NOT* the problematic workflow
I described. The workflow on the wiki is safe and correct.

The problem comes when you copy the file elsewhere and edit it.
If you run 'git pull' in the checkout, it won't see any conflicts
or anything to merge, because your changes are in another folder
elsewhere on your computer. If you then copy the file back so you
can commit it, you circumvent the version control system. That's
when problems happen.

> - If we push the po file on Damned Lies, get back the merged file and
> push it to git, will it solve the problem?

I don't know how DL works. But unless there's some tracking of
which revision you downloaded from and some attempt at merging,
then I suspect DL is effectively the broken workflow, just with
a web server in between.

> - Is there a git command to use before commiting or pushing to solve
> the problem? (it should be written in the guideline)

git pull --rebase

> Translators, proofreaders and commiters do hopefully not have to be in
> computer science domain. I am not a programmer
> and not used to git. If i have to read the git manual before
> committing, it would be very discouraging.

git isn't a programming tool. It's a tool to let multiple people
from around the planet work on the same sets of files. People in
the documentation team use git. They're not programmers; they're
tech writers.

I realize it's not trivial to learn. But understanding the basic
ideas of version control is just an incredibly valuable skill for
anybody who works with a large and distributed team.

--
Shaun