Re: [RFC/PATCH] Makefile: allow po generation through po target

From: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Date: Mar 17, 2016, 22:42 UTC
Message-ID: <xmqq8u1gzpz3.fsf@gitster.mtv.corp.google.com>
In-Reply-To: <2296423d1c46365f1fdeaa12cd1917bc859ff8d9.1458227678.git.git@drmicha.warpmail.net>

Michael J Gruber <git@drmicha.warpmail.net> writes:

Show 16 quoted lines

> The main Makefile has a "pot" target that recreates the git.pot file of
> strings which are marked for translation.
>
> Add a "po" target that recreates the $(LANGUAGE).po files which contain
> the translations (or stubs).
>
> Signed-off-by: Michael J Gruber <git@drmicha.warpmail.net>
> ---
>
> Notes:
>     This makes it easier to recreate po (and mo) without reading po/README.
>     Alternatively, one may think about a Makefile in po/ which does both pot
>     and po updates, just like we have makefiles in t/ and Ducumentation/.
>     
>     This doesn't give you proper before-after diffs yet, but at least the after
>     state.

More seriously, the "before state" does not exist anywhere, because *.po and *.pot are expected not to be in sync with the source, and after a code developer runs "make po", because she does not know all the languages we have *.po for, she has to "git checkout" to erase the changes made by "make po".

So while your starting discussion (i.e. RFC-ness of this patch) is very much appreciated, I do not think this is a good change we would want to base further work on top. For "before-after-diff" purposes, the targets for before and after should drop their output in an untracked build artifact, instead of overwriting tracked files, I would think.