Package: lintian Version: 2.1.6 Severity: wishlist Tags: l10n http://people.debian.org/~codehelp/#debconf
http://lists.debian.org/debian-mentors/2009/01/msg00178.html I've been thinking about translation and debconf, partially due to my work on TDebs etc. I think there are good reasons to consider any untranslated debconf templates as automatically buggy. debconf only ever asks the same question once - to be effective, that question should be translated the very first time that question is offered to the user. Translating it after the user has answered the question in English is pointless - at least as far as that user is concerned. So, I wonder if lintian could extend checks/po-debconf to raise an error not only if any package contains a completely untranslated set of templates but also check if a single question is untranslated even if the rest of the templates have one or more translations. It is important that if a question is translated, even just once, that the error is not issued - only questions that have no translations at all should generate the error. Maybe for Squeeze it could even be a release goal that no package using debconf is uploaded without the translations being updated. A lintian test would be a useful stage in such a process. 'msgfmt -c --statistics' will output the status of the debian/po files or it may just be simpler to parse the templates file(s) in the binary package(s) and check for any 'Description' that does not have a 'Description-[a-z]{2}\..*:' in the corresponding Template: stanza. e.g.: Template: emsource/svnusername Type: string Description: Subversion login to use on buildd.emdebian.org: ... Description-cs.UTF-8: Uživatelské jméno pro subversion na buildd.emdebian.org: ... Description-eu.UTF-8: buildd.emdebian.org-en erabiliko den subversion erabiltzaile izena: ... Description-fi.UTF-8: Koneella buildd.emdebian.org käytettävä Subversion-tunnus: ... Template: emsetup/aptagent ... Deliberately breaking that stanza produces: Template: emsource/svnusername Type: string Description: Subversion login to use on buildd.emdebian.org: ... . Deliberately compromising the question to break translations Template: emsetup/aptagent ... No lintian warning is raised after this act of wanton vandalism. ;-) $ lintian -Ii ../build-area/libemdebian-tools-perl_1.4.15_all.deb $ lintian (2.1.6) The lack of a Description-$foo at the start of a line after a Description: but before the next empty line would indicate the error with a high degree of certainty. (UTF-8 is by no means a reliable token, sadly). A lintian error would also provide a quite useful "hook" for various l10n scripts that may exist or will soon be written by myself and/or Christian Perrier, just by parsing lintian.debian.org. It would provide very useful data on existing translation support and assist me in the development of a range of TDeb support code. An extension like this would complement the existing support for newer-debconf-templates and no-complete-debconf-translation. -- System Information: Debian Release: 5.0 APT prefers unstable APT policy: (500, 'unstable') Architecture: amd64 (x86_64) Kernel: Linux 2.6.26-1-amd64 (SMP w/2 CPU cores) Locale: LANG=en_GB.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=en_GB.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8) Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/bash Versions of packages lintian depends on: ii binutils 2.18.1~cvs20080103-7 The GNU assembler, linker and bina ii diffstat 1.46-1 produces graph of changes introduc ii dpkg-dev 1.14.24 Debian package development tools ii file 4.26-2 Determines file type using "magic" ii gettext 0.17-6 GNU Internationalization utilities ii intltool-debian 0.35.0+20060710.1 Help i18n of RFC822 compliant conf ii libipc-run-perl 0.82-1 Perl module for running processes ii libparse-debianchan 1.1.1-2 parse Debian changelogs and output ii libtimedate-perl 1.1600-9 Time and date functions for Perl ii liburi-perl 1.37+dfsg-1 Manipulates and accesses URI strin ii man-db 2.5.2-3 on-line manual pager ii perl [libdigest-sha 5.10.0-19 Larry Wall's Practical Extraction lintian recommends no packages. Versions of packages lintian suggests: ii binutils-multiarch 2.18.1~cvs20080103-7 Binary utilities that support mult ii libtext-template-pe 1.44-1.2 Text::Template perl module ii man-db 2.5.2-3 on-line manual pager -- no debconf information -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-bugs-dist-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
