Re: Bug#512210: lintian: [checks/po-debconf] Extend template check for updated strings

[Russ Allbery <rra@debian.org>]

[ Sigh.  *This* time I'll copy debian-i18n. ]

I'll go ahead and copy debian-i18n on this reply as there are several
questions below.  The discussion is about detecting failure to notify
translators to get new translations before upload.  There is an existing
Lintian tag, no-complete-debconf-translation, for this, but it's currently
only severity: wishlist.  (Which, I should note, matches the severity of
the bugs filed about translations at present, although I personally treat
them as higher priority than wishlist for my packages.)

Neil Williams <codehelp@debian.org> writes:

> Well that check only works on the source package and only uses msgfmt -
> it could probably be improved with a check on the binaries and the
> actual templates file(s).

Could you explain a bit more about what that would catch that the current
check doesn't catch, other than the (rather unusual) case of only running
lintian on the .deb file without running it on the source package?  All
po-debconf checks are currently done against the source package, and if we
can diagnose the problem on the source package, I'd rather do it there
since fixing the problem really requires action on the whole source
package rather than separate actions for each binary package.

> In the original report, I only tested against the .deb. The
> no-complete-debconf-translation check is not high enough severity to
> show up without -I when checking the source package.

Yes, we can change the severity, although I'd like to run that past
debian-i18n first.

> If the binary check is added, the certainty can be raised and also the
> severity. With that change, the description could be made more strict:

I don't see why a binary check would change the certainty.  Maybe I'm
missing something?  It's certainty: possible right now because there may
be cases where translators were warned but didn't have a chance to do any
translations (for an obscure package, for instance).  I think that will
always be the case.

debian-mentors discussion also raises the valid point that a brand new
package possibly shouldn't go to translators before the first upload.  I'd
like to get a debian-i18n opinion on that as well.  Should we skip the
Lintian tag for no complete translation if this is the first packaging?
(We can detect this by noting that we only have one changelog entry.)

> I'd like to see severity important but normal would be OK for starters.

Remember, the rule of thumb here is that severity should match the
severity that you'd pick for the bug that you filed about the problem,
were you to file a bug.  Important is a rather large leap over the current
severities used for translations.

-- 
Russ Allbery (rra@debian.org)               <http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>