On Tue, 31 Mar 2009 13:06:35 -0400 Filipus Klutiero <chealer@gmail.com> wrote: > Neil Williams wrote: > > Primary Motivations (in order): > > 1. Updates to translations should not require source NMU's. > > > I guess that means avoiding to NMU with new diff.gz -s? If so, what are > the underlying motivations? To prevent translation updates (particularly debconf ones) from interfering with existing transitions and release cycles. There is no need to rebuild the source of the package merely to update or add a new translation. The current barriers to such rebuilds can be overcome with adapted tools, as described in the DEP. http://dep.debian.net/deps/dep4/#index10h2 There is no good reason to permit translation updates to cause the binary packages to be changed by recompiling the source. Dependency versions change, new bugs can be introduced, existing transitions get more complicated and the one time when translation updates are most useful is during a release freeze when the binaries must not change. The whole point of i18n (the process of making a package support localisation by internationalising the codebase) is to ensure that the same compiled binary can operate with any compatible translation. This allows users to set LANG= and get the localised version at runtime. Requiring that translations can only be added or updated in Debian by recompiling the source is a complete waste of effort and is something that gettext and other l10n middle-ware are expressly designed to avoid. Debian, currently, is simply not getting the best out of l10n and is making life difficult for everyone by putting the translated files in the same packages as the compiled binaries. Each release cycle, this comes back to bite us. TDebs will remove this burden. > What is the purpose of creating a new binary package format for this (as > opposed to reusing, say, the deb format)? To support easier management of the translations, including allowing users to only install the translations that are needed for one particular installation, instead of every user getting every translation for every package they install, whether those translations are even supported or not. The current model is based on server installations where lots of locales may be configured to support localisation of web content. Installing all 90 locales does not translate well to desktop installations with only a handful of users and maybe 5 or 6 languages. On a typical Debian box, /usr/share/locale/ takes up 250Mb when each language only requires a maximum of 9Mb. TDebs are based on the .deb format, it is only a small change in the organisation of the data.tar.gz but it simplifies various stages of handling the resulting packages in the repository, in upload rules and in other support tools. -- Neil Williams ============= http://www.data-freedom.org/ http://www.nosoftwarepatents.com/ http://www.linux.codehelp.co.uk/
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