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Top-level
 @civodul @jas4711 As I use the extended GNU build system for my own personal projects, I find it a bit frustrating that the PO files would not be present in the source tree, but I understand that if they were, then we would have a big bunch of undesirable “Update PO translation” commits. As for Gnulib more specifically, I have noticed that in several places, you can safely commit (semi-)generated files, and rely on syntax-check to detect when they should be updated. 13 comments
Finally, I think we should not forget that the modification time of the .texi file impacts the modification date that is printed in the final output of the manual. Setting it to 1970 is awkward in this case. @gugurumbe @civodul Having modtime influence PDF output seems bad - can’t we use a @DATE@ macro set at ./configure-time that the .texi file @include? It should probably the time of the last commit to the project. @jas4711 @civodul Another option I considered to avoid the dependency on git is to have another syntax-check that would check that you also changed the modification date of the manual in the most recent commit that modified it. It’s harmless to skip this check if you have a shallow clone of the repository or not have git installed. @gugurumbe @civodul How does .git content changing break ability to include the entire git repository in Debian’s gnulib package? @gugurumbe @civodul binary blobs that can change for any reason sounds awfully similar to other binary packages in Debian. @gugurumbe @civodul PO files in a separate branch is an interesting approach! I still worry that they effectively are vendored files. How about storing po/SHA256SUMS in git and verify any downloaded files against that? There is a data-focused doctrine that says data should only be maintained at its preferred canonical location and not duplicated, and I think it makes sense for source files too. @jas4711 @civodul They are vendored files that can crash things if you mess up format strings. You can also target specific locales (so, specific countries) and noone checks their programs in foreign locales in CI systems. Gettext has tools in place to check that the format arguments stay the same when it detects a format string, so that is good.  @gugurumbe @jas4711 FWIW, Guix and the Shepherd have .po files checked in and periodically updated. I don’t see this as a problem. After all, they’re source, too. |
Gregory's Server
@civodul @jas4711 A somewhat relevant example is how the NEWS file is checked, but there are other examples.
As for “and distributions could package the gnulib git repository (up to some current version)”, I’m not sure it would be easy, because git allows itself to re-pack its objects whenever it wants, so further steps may be needed for the content of the .git repository to remain reproducible over time.