Re: [PATCH] translations: Make "GIT Committish:" lines obsolete

[Johannes Schindelin]

Hi,

On Sat, 13 Jan 2007, Jan Nieuwenhuizen wrote:

> Johannes Schindelin <address@hidden> writes:
> 
> > Use git to determine when the translation last changed instead of
> > relying on the "GIT Committish" line.
> 
> Thanks for helping to solve this silly Git issue.  However, I do not
> understand, how can Git know what original version was translated?

Well, it can't. As I mentioned in my email, the committer has to make sure 
that he is committing an up-to-date translation, i.e. that it corresponds 
to the English documentation in the _same_ revision.

> It is perfectly possible that the translater copies the entire site 
> (currently identifying and freezing the original copy by adding Git 
> Committish: <> in those files), translates all files, and commits 2 
> weeks later.  In the mean time, the original site has seen several 
> updates.
> 
> Using this patch, will the correct diff be shown to the translator to
> help her incorporating the changes made in the mean time?

It _can_ be done, but is a little more involved. The basic idea is to 
introduce a side branch starting at the revision this translation is based 
on. Then, just commit the translation (which means that the translated 
text corresponds exactly to the English text in that revision). Merge the 
result back into the main branch. In git commands:

# replace myweb~20 by whatever revision this is based on
$ git checkout -b sidebranch myweb~20

# apply the patch (assuming you got it as a mail with an inlined patch)
$ git am themailboxfilewiththepatch

# go back to main branch
$ git checkout myweb

# merge the sidebranch
$ git pull . sidebranch

(# with git 1.5.0 this will be instead
 $ git merge sidebranch)

The commit ancestry now looks like this:

myweb~21 - myweb~20 - ... - myweb
         \                /
             sidebranch

Note that what was myweb~20 before is now myweb~21, becasuse we added a 
commit to that branch.

This will _only_ work, however, if myweb~20 .. myweb~1 do _not_ touch 
files of that particular translation (otherwise _they_ would be found, 
instead of the changes in sidebranch).

Having said that, I doubt that it will happen all that often: Once we have 
reasonably up-to-date translations, the updates will be small, and 
probably applied very fast.

And for new translations, the contributors can use "make 
check-translation" themselves, to find the spots they have to update 
before submission.

Ciao,
Dscho