[jbosstools-dev] Re: JBoss Tools .pot files checked in; careful when renaming .properties!

G'day all, I finally bit the bullet and put in a somewhat kludgy workaround for the fact that properties files are not kept in the same directory under each plugin, but all over the place (src, src/main, resources, jbosscore, ...). I can always take out the workaround when https://jira.jboss.org/jira/browse/JBIDE-2972 is resolved. With the workaround, the pot filenames should be fairly stable, so I've checked in the converted pot files under i18n/po. I really, really tried to avoid checking in generated files like pot files. However, keeping pot files in the source tree seems to be a universal convention for gettext projects, and corresponding pot and po files are usually kept in the repository together. This enables (non-programmer) translators to merge new strings for translation just by checking out the po directory, without having to run xgettext (or Ant-Gettext, in this case) against the entire codebase themselves. Based on feedback from the L10n team, I have also changed the filename mapping used when converting from .properties to .pot files. The pot filename now eliminates segments like "src", "src/main", "resources", "jbosscore", etc which are very likely to change over time. I have also flattened the remaining directory hierarchy. I think this retais enough of the original path to prevent name collisions, but shortens it enough to be more changeproof and easier for translators to work with. With the new mapping, the names of source directories can be refactored without affecting the .pots and thus invalidating translations. For instance, changing myplugin/src/**/*.properties to myplugin/resources/**/*.properties is perfectly safe. But changing the name of a module, a plugin or a .properties file (or its package) will! (See the end of this email.) Thus the property file org/hibernate/console/ConsoleMessages.properties in the plugin org.hibernate.eclipse (module hibernatetools) is mapped to: i18n/po/hibernatetools/org.hibernate.eclipse-org.hibernate.console.ConsoleMessages/ org.hibernate.console.ConsoleMessages.pot The po/pot files are still grouped into modules (for managability), and we keep track of the plugin id and the resource path (ie the path used at runtime to load the resource). The resource path is used again for the filename within the directory, partly to make it easier to find (eg in Eclipse, press Ctrl-Shift-R, the enter *ConsoleMessages or other wildcard). In accordance with the Gettext tools' default conventions, po files will be kept in the same directory, but named ${locale}.po. So the above directory will look like this when translated: i18n/po/hibernatetools/org.hibernate.eclipse-org.hibernate.console.ConsoleMessages/ de_DE.po es_ES.po fr_FR.po org.hibernate.console.ConsoleMessages.pot pt_BR.po zh_CN.po Please be careful: 1. when renaming modules, plugins, .properties files, or packages which contain .properties files, or 2. when moving plugins to a different module. Any of these changes will prevent existing translations (when we have some) from being picked up, unless the affected po directories and files are manually renamed to suit. By me, probably. But feel free to rename the affected po directories/files if you feel confident to! I'm certainly not saying "don't rename things", but please try to go easy on me! Thanks! Regards, Sean.