L10N migration to transifex.net

[Dimitris Glezos]

On Wed, Feb 16, 2011 at 11:34 PM, Paul W. Frields <stickster at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Wed, Feb 16, 2011 at 10:31:21AM -0500, Eric "Sparks" Christensen wrote:
>> On 02/16/2011 09:43 AM, Zach Oglesby wrote:
>> > Over the last few days it has been decided that we are going to move
>> > all of Fedora's translation efforts away from a self hosted solution
>> > and on to transifex.net.
>> >
>> > The migration over to tx.net also means a huge jump to version 1.1
>> > from 0.7, with that we no longer have support for tx to commit to the
>> > git repo[1]. This is going to require a redesign of our workflow to
>> > insure that we are publishing the most up to date.
>> >
>> > The new system requires us to use a command-line tool, that is in the
>> > process of being packaged, and works much like git[1]. This means that
>> > we now have to pull in translations by hand, but tx.net can monitor
>> > the git repo (over HTTP) for changes that we make (you can also push
>> > via tx command).
>> >
>> > Trans.fp.o will be turned off on Feb 18th, so we need to make sure
>> > that we have all of the current trans worked saved and then we need to
>> > work on moving to tx.net. We still have a little time to get that part
>> > of this figured out since we are not due to make POT files until March
>> > 15th, but we need to start looking at what this means for publishing
>> > to docs.fp.o and for packaging into the release.
>> >
>> > It is important to remember that the pains that we may be dealing with
>> > are not because of the migration to tx.net but because of the upgrade
>> > to 1.1, which would have happend regardless. If anyone has any
>> > questions or concerns please don't hesitate to ask!
>> >
>> > I am going to add this to the agenda for tonights meeting as well.
>> >
>> > [1]: http://help.transifex.net/user-guide/one-dot-zero.html
>> > [2]: http://help.transifex.net/user-guide/client/client-0.4.html
>> >
>>
>> This sounds like a great opportunity for the translators to better own
>> their translations.  I know at one point we were looking at translators
>> being responsible for publishing and packaging their translations when
>> they felt their translations were ready.  This would solve the problem
>> of us Docs folks arbitrarily publishing translations.
>>
>> It is unfortunate that tx.net can't interface with our git repositories,
>> though.  I'd hate to loose data in a system we don't have control over.
>
> IF you're worried about data loss, you could ask the Tx.n
> administrators directly about the integrity/backup mechanisms they
> have in place against data loss.

We take regular backups, and we're in a process of increasing the
frequency this happens. We'll explain more in the next days/week.

But the most important part is that one can use the client to export
all files in regular intervals and commit them (even with a cronjob)
to his own git tree.

> AIUI TX.n can provide full
> translation history via git, which means our ability to get data out
> of the system should be unimpeded.

Correction: Transifex no longer providfes full translation history via
git. We *might* provide a mechanism in the client in the future which
could be converted to git history (JSON history data to git
format-patch or something). But this will require a person with this
itch to scratch. =)

>(Also, the code used to run Tx.n is 100% FOSS so we can do crazy
> manipulations or even make RFE's if needed.)

True!

-d


-- 
Dimitris Glezos

Transifex: The Multilingual Publishing Revolution
http://www.transifex.net/ -- http://www.indifex.com/