Re: Stable ab/i18n branch

[Michael J Gruber <git@drmicha.warpmail.net>]

Junio C Hamano venit, vidit, dixit 19.10.2010 01:39:
> Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason <avarab@gmail.com> writes:
> 
>> Do you mean to re-arrange it so that there's a patch at the front of
>> the series that introduces gettext.h with only the fallbacks:
>>
>>     #define _(s) (s)
>>     #define N_(s) (s)
>>
>> And then merge the ~120 gettextize patches first and do the
>> infrastructure later?
> 
> Not really.
> 
> Two pieces that would be nice to have in 'master' (or even 'maint', if we
> consider avoiding merge conflicts and mismerges when fixes are queued
> there) are:
> 
>  1. preparatory fixes to code that builds message string by concatenating
>     parts of speech in English word ordering into buffer or emitting to
>     output stream piece by piece; they should convert them to some form of
>     sprintf-like format strings plus arguments.  This does not necessarily
>     have to mark the format strings with _(s).
> 
>  2. the empty definitions for _(s) and N_(s).
> 
> I would consider the first one part of general clean-up job, which we know
> will help i18n, but which we would want to do regardless of i18n.  And it
> is probably the most error prone part in the whole process.  The sooner
> the result of these two steps hit 'master', the less pain for everybody.
> 
> And then:
> 
>  3. actual marking of strings with _(s) and N_(s).
> 
> which can be merged to 'next' after vetting for regression (the first two
> classes).
> 
>  4. Adding and polishing of *.po files for actual messages and languages,
>     i.e. l10n.
> 
> This can happen pretty much independently from 3.  Honestly I would be
> happier if I do not have to keep track of the actual l10n part.
> 
> I think the current series to some degree conflates steps 1. and 3.  As
> the list of risks I outlined in the previous message show, mistakes in 1.
> is much more grave than mistakes in 3. (iow, no big deal for having a few
> untranslated messages during early rounds of i18n support); I would have
> preferred these two steps were clearly separated, so that we can push the
> first two steps out to the 'master' sooner.

I'd just like to second (or third or..) Junio's points here since I had
suggested a split like that earlier already, and I think the current
state of affairs simply makes many potential reviewers (at least one
that I know of) go away.

1.,2. and (maybe to a lesser degree) also 3. should be able to find many
reviewers, thus making the potentially problematic parts as solid as
possible. (I'm still waiting for a conceptual approach to 4., i.e.
glossary first, but that is a different issue.)

Michael