Hi. We have LINGUAS support in portage for quite some time now, but how do we handle LINGUAS? It's not as evident as it seems and thus we need some guidelines. So I'll formulate few questions below but first let's look how portage works with LINGUAS. If you know this skip to Questions section below.
Portage/gettext --------------- Like USE variable LINGUAS value could be set by user in /etc/make.conf, package.keywords or environment. There are three different cases: 1) LINGUAS set to some value, 2) LINGUAS set and contains '*'[1] 3) LINGUAS unset. portage will treat this cases differently for ebuilds with linguas_<lang> in IUSE and without. This makes 6 cases: 1. In case LINGUAS is set and ebuild has no linguas_<lang> in IUSE portage exports LINGUAS as is. 2. In case LINGUAS is set and IUSE contains linguas_<lang> portage exports intersection of languages in LINGUAS and IUSE. E.g. LINGUAS set to "lang1 lang2" and IUSE contains "linguaus_<lang1> linguaus_<lang3>" portage will export LINGUAS="lang1". 3. In case LINGUAS contains '*' and there is no linguaus_<lang> in IUSE portage unsets LINGUAS. 4. In case LINGUAS contains '*' and IUSE contains linguas_<lang> portage exports LINGUAS with langs defined in the IUSE's linguas_<lang>. 5. If LINGUAS is unset and ebuild has no linguas_<lang> flag portage unsets LINGUAS. 6. In case LINGUAS is unset and IUSE contains linguas_<lang> portage exports LINGUAS="". | ebuild contains linguas_<lang> the IUSE | --------------------------------------------------| | no | yes | ------------------------------------------------------------------- LINGUAS unset | LINGUAS unset | LINGUAS='' | ------------------------------------------------------------------| LINGUAS has '*' | LINGUAS unset | LINGUAS='lang' | ------------------------------------------------------------------- LINGUAS set |LINGUAS set literally|LINGUAS set to intersection| | |of lang in IUSE and LINGUAS| ------------------------------------------------------------------- BTW, I guess all above is applicable to all USE_EXPANDED variables. But unlike other variables LINGUAS is used by gettext and in case it is unset gettext installs all translations. Questions --------- 1. Do we want all packages to support LINGUAS if possible? It is possible to leave gettext based package without LINGUAS and everything will just work, but I think that it's good idea to make supported languages visible to user through linguas_<lang> flags. 2. How should we handle case of unset LINGUAS in ebuild? Should we mimic gettext and install all supported languages, using code like LINGUAS=${LINGUAS-%UNSET%} if test "%UNSET%" == "$LINGUAS"; then # install all supported languages fi ? If yes, it's easy to write such code and put in eclass. If no, how do we live with inconsistency that some packages will install all languages some, will install nothing (document in handbook and add portage warning in case LINGUAS is unset?)? 3. What is the purpose of strip-linguas function (mentioned in devmanual)? It's clear what it does but I have no ideas why. Probably similar code could be used in QA function that will gather supported languages from po directories and warn maintainer that it's time to update linguas_<lang> in IUSE (and probably later it could be expanded to support qt packages too). [1] or equivalently linguas_* is set in package.use -- Peter.