Idea about international files at .deb

[hector@correo.scouts-es.org]

Hi all

I have seen the discussion about how to solve the problem of having all the files need for translation instaled even when you may never use them. I have not seen that any solution has been reached, so I would like to comment my idea to see what you all think.

If install all the language-related files as /tmp/package_name/language.tgz and have dpkg to pick the user chossen languages (maybe in dpkg conf file) and untar the apropiate file in / as it is done with data.tar.gz, you could have a system with only the languages related files that you need.

As an example if I say I want Spanish and French installed on my system, when I install package foo.deb dpkg untar data.tar.gz (as allways) check to see if there is a /tmp/foo/es.tar.gz and/or a /tmp/foo/fr.tar.gz and untar them just like it did with data.tar.gz.

Of course the foo.deb package is still of the same size but not everything gets into the HD. Doing this we don´t increase the size of Packages.gz.
Another thing is that in case of dpkg failure the files at /tmp get deleted (when you do a reboot, a cron job or admin deleting by hand) so there is no problem on having ever growing dirs.

Of course, dpkg would need to change a couple of things to support this, but if you people thing it may be a good idea, I would not mind start working on it.

So, What you think?

Héctor García