Re: [PATCH 2/3] archive: implement protocol v2 archive command

From: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Date: Sep 14, 2018, 16:14 UTC
Message-ID: <xmqq4lesdpk4.fsf@gitster-ct.c.googlers.com>
In-Reply-To: <20180914060552.GD219147@aiede.svl.corp.google.com>

Jonathan Nieder <jrnieder@gmail.com> writes:

Show 16 quoted lines

>> I think though that instead of doing setlocale() it would be better to
>> pass some flag saying we're operating in a machine-readable mode, and
>> then we'd (as part of the protocol defintion) say we're going to emit
>> GIT_ERR_UPLOAD_ARCHIVE_EXPECTED_DELIM_PACKET or whatever.
>
> I think you're suggesting client-side message generation, and that is
> one way to handle internationalization of server output.
>
> The main downside is when the server really does want to provide a
> custom error message.  For that, we'd need
>
>  1. To propagate LANG to the server, so it knows what human language
>     to generate messages in.
>
>  2. On the server side, to produce messages in that language if
>     available, with an appropriate fallback if not.

That is one way to do so, but it does not have to be the only way, I would think. You can send a machine parsable message in pieces, and assemble the parts of speech into a message at the receiving end. Like sending a msgid to identify an entry in the .pot file, and values to be filled in.