Re: transifex committing bogons

[Dimitris Glezos <dimitris at glezos dot com>]

On Wed, Jan 21, 2009 at 11:24 PM, Roland McGrath <roland@redhat.com> wrote:
> Who do I complain at about the 'transif' user committing crap to my repo?
> Whether done by robot or human, someone has to be responsible, and
> responsive to project administrators.  The L10N/FAQ page is real short on
> prominent answers to obvious questions for project admins like this one.

Hi Ronald.

Problems with Transifex are typically reported on the "Fedora L10n" >
"Transifex" component, as explained in this FAQ entry on the page you
cited. You can use those channels to ensure maximum visibility and
quick fixing.

  http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/L10N/FAQ#bugs

Low-level system stuff are handled by the Fedora Infrastructure team
typically on on their Trac instance or #fedora-admin on Freenode.

> As requested, I enabled transif to commit to the elfutils repo on
> git.fedorahosted.org.  Then we got the following commit.
>
> I understand doing a dummy commit to test the access.
> I don't understand doing one and then not reverting it.

Usually one of the translators issues a dummy commit like adding a
comment line in the POT, and in the case of elfutils where we don't
have a POT file in the Makefile. In the past this action hasn't raised
any concerns. You can always limit the files the translators have to
using a regex, as noted when you registered your project.

> I don't understand committing bogus mis-formatting to my po/ChangeLog.

The Changelog is automatically updated by Transifex. Unfortunately, a
revert commit for the changelog can't be submitted through the web
interface.
The mis-formatting of it is a bug that appeared after our last upgrade
and spotted after the commit. It was immediately reported as a bug of
Transifex, which we'll have fixed in the next version coming up in the
next days [1].

  http://transifex.org/ticket/77

Please feel free to submit tickets to improve the software. Patches
are also warmly welcome.

> If you can't even do a dummy commit so that it's harmless to the project,
> why should I trust you and your robot to be allowed to commit to our repo?
>
> We will very much appreciate the contributions of translators, and we
> recognize the great contribution of automating and streamlining the process
> for translators and project maintainers.  But lack of streamlined
> automation is better than robots (or human contributors, however
> well-meaning) we can't trust to touch our project's files.

It's always up to the project maintainer to decide whether to receive
translation files manually through bug reports, emails, attachments to
a wiki page, etc. or through an automated proxy like Transifex, either
on their master branch or a different one.

If you think it doesn't work for you at all, you can always pull the
plug and receive translation contributions with the traditional way.

The software is mostly written and maintained by Fedora volunteers,
and we're trying our best to make it work right and fit well with the
workflow of developers. Sometimes a bug might slip and 3am-commits
might not seem quite right. Sometimes things might go wrong, like any
piece of our infrastructure. Thanks for pointing out the errors so
that we can improve our toolchain.

-δ


> commit cdc4ce361bb098bc0ca67315dfc839642a1af13d
> Author: Dimitris Glezos <dimitris@glezos.com>
> Date:   Wed Jan 21 01:04:45 2009 +0000
>
>    Dummy commit, testing Transifex at
>    https://translate.fedoraproject.org/submit/module/elfutils/.
>
>    Transmitted-via: Transifex (translate.fedoraproject.org)
>
> diff --git a/po/ChangeLog b/po/ChangeLog
> index bbb72fa..95a51f3 100644
> --- a/po/ChangeLog
> +++ b/po/ChangeLog
> @@ -1,4 +1,7 @@
> -2007-06-05  Ulrich Drepper  <drepper@redhat.com>
> +Dummy commit, testing Transifex at
> +https://translate.fedoraproject.org/submit/module/elfutils/.
> +
> +Transmitted-via: Transifex (translate.fedoraproject.org)2007-06-05  Ulrich Drepper  <drepper@redhat.com>
>
>        * Makefile.in.in: Update from gettext 0.16.1.
>        * Rules-quot: Likewise.
> diff --git a/po/Makefile.in.in b/po/Makefile.in.in
> index 5022b8b..7cdfad7 100644
> --- a/po/Makefile.in.in
> +++ b/po/Makefile.in.in
> @@ -9,6 +9,7 @@
>  # General Public License and is *not* in the public domain.
>  #
>  # Origin: gettext-0.16
> +#
>
>  PACKAGE = @PACKAGE@
>  VERSION = @VERSION@
>



-- 
Dimitris Glezos
Jabber ID: glezos@jabber.org, GPG: 0xA5A04C3B
http://dimitris.glezos.com/

"He who gives up functionality for ease of use
loses both and deserves neither." (Anonymous)
--