[Fedora-packaging] how to handle translations problems with macro find_lang

[Mario Blättermann]

Hi Jason,

Am 19.03.2015 um 16:34 schrieb Jason L Tibbitts III:
> Yes, the guidelines say you _must_ use %find_lang:
>   https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Packaging:Guidelines#Why_do_we_need_to_use_.25find_lang.3F
> but, hey, if it doesn't actually work because the files you're trying to
> use aren't "locale" files according to %find_lang, then do what you have
> to do.  Certainly add comments to your spec indicating why %find_lang
> doesn't work, and maybe file a bug against rpm explaining the
> situation.  %find_lang just calls /usr/lib/rpm/find-lang.sh and it
> should be trivial to add another option to process the files you have
> (assuming you can actually understand find-lang.sh, which is.... not
> particularly easy to follow.
> 

The %find_lang macro is particularly useful for *.mo files from Gettext, because
they get installed in a nested directory structure. In Qt, the files are in a
single directory. Normally, we would exclude the dir content from the file list
(adding the empty dir with %dir) and let find_lang generate the appropriate file
list. Well, it is useful for the mentioned Gettext files and man pages. But in
our special case with the *.language files in the same directory, it is actually
too difficult to use, and I see no advantage. In my review I had pointed to
find_lang because the guidelines "force" us to use it, but if we could get an
exception here, it would be great.

Best Regards,
Mario