Re: [PATCH 00/10] Factorization of messages with similar meaning

From: Jeff King <peff@peff.net>
Date: Dec 3, 2021, 21:55 UTC
Message-ID: <YaqSXvp6ZxOFqeuk@coredump.intra.peff.net>
In-Reply-To: <pull.1088.git.1638514909.gitgitgadget@gmail.com>

On Fri, Dec 03, 2021 at 07:01:39AM +0000, Jean-Noël Avila via GitGitGadget wrote:

Show 18 quoted lines

> This series is a meager attempt at rationalizing a small fraction of the
> internationalized messages. Sorry in advance for the dull task of reviewing
> these insipide patches.
> 
> Doing so has some positive effects:
> 
>  * non-translatable constant strings are kept out of the way for translators
>  * messages with identical meaning are built identically
>  * the total number of messages to translate is decreased.
> 
> I'm inclined to even go a step further and turn these messages into #define
> or const strings. This would have the added benefits:
> 
>  * make sure that the messages to translate are identical
>  * create a library of message skeletons to be picked up when new messages
>    are needed
> 
> What do you think?

One slight negative of this approach is that it makes messages a bit harder to grep for. It sometimes really nice to "git jump grep" for specific messages you got to see where they're coming from.

I don't think that's a strong objection, though. If this is making the translations overall more maintainable it might be worth the tradeoff.

We could also allow GIT_VERBOSE=1 or something to print the file/line of error(), warning(), and die() messages, which solves the same problem. I think Ævar might have had some patches in that direction.

-Peff