Reminder: default branch is closed

Wagner Bruna wagner.bruna+mercurial at gmail.com
Thu Jan 26 08:02:09 CST 2012


On 01/26/2012 06:14 AM, Martin Geisler wrote:
> Matt Mackall <mpm at selenic.com> writes:
>> On Wed, 2012-01-25 at 14:19 +0100, Martin Geisler wrote:
>>>
>>> (...)
>>>
>>> I've considered to ask the translators to only use the default branch.
>>> This gives them a steady flow of changes and no disruptions when default
>>> is merged into stable.
>>
>> That will result in no i18n changes getting added during freezes. If
>> anything, translators should work on the stable branch, where there is
>> less message churn?
> 
> I was thinking that it would be nicer to have a steady stream of changes
> instead of a big change every three months when default it merged into
> stable. In that way, it feels like default sees less churn than stable
> where you suddenly get lots of new strings 14 days before the release.

In my experience, it makes more sense to always work on the stable branch,
because:

- most users run either tagged releases or stable tip, so translation updates
(and user feedback!) become available sooner;

- all new messages get reviewed before a major release, since during the
freeze I need to take a look at them anyway;

- on default, the .po lines tend to jump around a lot due to code changes,
polluting diff output (diff is very useful to spot small changes during
translation updates). And if the stable and default .po files diverge, any
change to a .po file on stable may trigger a merge conflict (a smarter merge
tool for .po files could help here).

FWIW, the last freeze changeset added/changed only ~100 messages on stable,
from a total of ~3900.

Regards,
Wagner

> It's just a hunch based on the little work I've done on the Danish
> translation. It's lagging behind severily and so it makes more sense for
> me to only work on the default branch.
> 
> If translators are happy to juggle two branches, then that's fine with
> me too.


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