[Sugar-devel] [Localization] Access to multiple repos in SugarLabs gitorious

[Chris Leonard]

Tracing this back to the thread that started on sugar-devel, one part of the
original question was about submitting translations for the infoslicer
activity

There is an open Trac ticket to get the infoslicer POT file hosted in
Pootle.
http://dev.sugarlabs.org/ticket/419

As someone mentioned on sugar-devel, things have been a bit busy on the
Pootle back-end with the still pending migration to the new server putting
the addition of new PO files temporarily on hold, simply as a practical
matter of minimizing the amount of rework in setting up the PO file and the
connections to the repo on the back-end.  The necessary first step
(user:pootle being granted commit rights on the infoslicer repo) has been
addressed.

It is a perfectly legitimate to raise the point that the process of getting
a PO file into Pootle is not clearly enough documented for new activity
developers / localizers and this needs some work so that it is clearer for
all parties.

at one point in the thread, Bastien asked:
"Who as the keys for adding an activity in OLPC Pootle?  Sayamindu?"

Yes, Sayamindu generally has been handling this.   Besides simply loading
the PO file up to Pootle, there are a series of scripts that need to be run
to create the connections so that user:pootle can commit the PO files to the
activities repo (user:pootle is essentially acting on behalf of the
individual language admins when they click the "commit" link on the POs in
their projects).  Running these set-up scripts properly requires a certain
level of sophistication and server-side privilege, which is part of the
reason that on the existing OLPC-hosted Pootle instance, this work was
generally left to Sayamindu alone.  Sayamindu has deposited these necessary
scripts in the Sugar Labs git repo, and he has been showing me how they
operate and sharing his expertise with me so that hopefully I can take on
some of these "administrivia" tasks so that it is not entirely on his
shoulders.  I think recruiting one or two more Pootle site admins (with
sufficient knowledge of L10n tools and strong records of contribution) may
well make a lot of sense as we go forward to keep up with the increased
levels of action on activity development.

The (hopefully soon) migration of Pootle to a new server should create the
opportunity to spread that burden a little more evenly.  It is my opinion
that there generally needs to be a higher level of awareness and clarity
about the i18n/L10n process among the Sugar Labs community and that the
transition to a new Pootle instance is an ideal opportunity to refresh the
documentation on the wiki and make it all more transparent.  I'd be happy to
have some additional volunteers step up to take part in that effort, but I
also understand that the process is somewhat obscure at the moment, so that
may be easier said than done.  The unexpected delays in getting the new
Pootle instance into production have been unfortunate in that it has delayed
some improvements (including loading up new activities like infoslicer),
but the upgraded version of Pootle (1.1 to 1.2) as well as the more capable
hardware will hopefully make the wait worthwhile, in the meantime, the
existing Pootle instance has been serving it's usual role as well as can be
expected and the localization teams have been doing tremendous work and
brought the completeness of localization to levels not previously attained.

Bottom-line: I think a critique of that the current process is not nearly
well enough documented is fair (the documentation pre-dates the SL
spin-out), as is the observation that the pending migration (as well as the
relatively recent string-freeze for the 0.84 release and handling of
string-freeze breaks) have introduced some slowness to respond to "new
business" requests.  I do expect this to get much better when the migration
is complete, but I also see this as an opportunity for the L10n and
developer communities to step up and revisit the documentation of the
process as it currently exists.

cjl
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