[bug#63483] [PATCH v2 0/4] build: Update po4a process.

[gemmaro]

Hello,

Maxim Cournoyer <maxim.cournoyer@gmail.com> writes:

> tags 63483 + moreinfo
> quit
>
> Hi gemmaro,
>
> Thanks for doing this!
>
> I have surveyed the series, and I'll need to dive into the details to
> see if everything adds up, but it looks good!
>
> We include a GNU ChangeLog in our git commit messages, as mentioned in
> info '(guix) Submitting Patches'.  There's a cross-reference to 'info
> (standards)Change Logs', which is made available upon installing the
> 'standards' Guix package (and 'info-reader').  This changelog should be
> a high level description of the changes, which is handy when reviewing.
>
> I hope this helps!  I hope to see a v2 soon :-)
>
> -- 
> Thanks,
> Maxim

Thank you for your response.  I read the chapter on Change Logs and rewrote it
to tried to make it more descriptive and more purposeful.

To recap, the goal of this change is to eliminate the po4a warning
("po4a-{updatepo,translate} is deprecated.  The unified po4a(1) program is
more convenient and less error prone.").  I checked it works by running "make"
and "make as-derivation".  The location of the PO files is not changed, so
Weblate can continue to be used as is.

Several things have changed since revision 1.  Firstly, I have broken down the
process and tried to write better commit messages and comments to make the
changes easier to grasp.  Secondly, I used po4a in batches in revision 1, but
this may not be suitable for the use case for Guix, so I left as is.

If it is the case to run po4a in batches, the change might be similar to the
revision 1.  However, there are the following concerns.  Because of these and
the aim here to clear po4a warnings, I don't use po4a in bulk.

 1) It may take more time to process the translations.  Combining them in one
    configuration file increases the number of target files to be handled.

 2) The Makefiles (doc/local.mk and po/doc/local.mk) become more complex,
    since a single run of po4a will update multiple files.

 3) PO files will need to be addressed.  Currently two are covered - manuals
    and cookbooks - but the merging of gettext entries will cause conflicts if
    there are different translations (msgstr) for the same source text
    (msgid).  I also think that the configuration of Weblate will then need to
    be changed[3] simultaneously.

 4) There would be some new almost empty PO files generated.

I noticed that the similar change[1] has been proposed.  It is possible that
action will be taken on the po4a side, but in the meantime we may encounter
problems that were not addressed in po4a-{updatepo,translate} [2].

[1] [PATCH] gnu: Replace deprecated po4a-* calls with po4a,
https://issues.guix.gnu.org/70042

[2] Why are the individual scripts deprecated?,
https://po4a.org/man/man7/po4a.7.php.en

[3] Translation projects / Allow translation propagation,
https://docs.weblate.org/en/latest/admin/projects.html#allow-translation-propagation

Regards,
gemmaro.

gemmaro (4):
  build: Align the Automake status lines of the po4a and the PO xref.
  build: Update the POT creation task with the po4a command.
  build: Use the po4a command for the translation generation.
  self: Use po4a instead of po4a-translate.

 Makefile.am     |  5 +++--
 configure.ac    |  3 +--
 doc/local.mk    | 30 +++++++++++++++++++++++-------
 guix/self.scm   | 12 +++++++++---
 po/doc/local.mk | 15 ++++++++-------
 po/doc/po4a.cfg | 32 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
 6 files changed, 76 insertions(+), 21 deletions(-)
 create mode 100644 po/doc/po4a.cfg


base-commit: 51de844a0ff6ea224367a384092896bce6848b9f
-- 
2.41.0