On Tue, Oct 20, 2009 at 4:24 AM, Thoka <[email protected]> wrote:
>
> The initial problem was due to compile time and permutations. We just
> launched a GWT application with 43 languages, which generates about
> 43*6(?) permutations, and to get 43 languages (where each language has
> about 800 text and 300 configuration properties) entirely correct,
> this would generate a whole bunch of extra builds and server downtime
> each time a country wants to change even a very small thing as a
> misspelling. Perhaps this is not very useful when an application is
> perfectly in shape, configured and all texts are flawless, but while
> in developing/staging state it has saved us weeks of development since
> the customer is now able to internationalize their application "live"
> at staging/pre-prod state via an I18N-servlet, without the need to
> translate blindly and wait for the re-build and re-deploy for each
> batch.
>
> Perhaps this is not a feature for the common GWT developer, but as
> stated, it is very nice to have for larger applications.
I agree the situation you describe is an issue. A few points:
- Doing a release build, with all the localizations, should only need to
be done when you are actually pushing a new build to production. All your
work can be done with a different module that limits the number of locales
(and user agents, depending on what sort of work you are doing) during
development.
- GWT is designed for parallel compilation. If you have a compile
cluster, you can build all the permutations in parallel so that the overall
build time is the same as one permutation if you have enough machines.
Instead of calling the Compiler entry point, you run Precompile on the main
node, then CompilePerms on each permutation (they can all be run in
parallel), and then Link after all permutations have finished. If the nodes
don't share a common filesystem, you have to do the work to copy the
precompilation.ser file to the permutation nodes and get all the artifacts
back from them to the main node. You also have to provide some glue for
your cluster/build system to make this happen, but the basic support is
there. Eventually we will probably provide more assistance in this area.
- Lex is working on changes to the Link phase which should (in theory)
allow incremental linking -- you could recompile just the permutation you
need to change and link it with the results of a previous compile, so if all
you did was to change the German translations you could just rebuild those
permutations to get your compiled output.
So, basically I agree that this is an issue but I think the best solution is
not to throw out compile-time evaluation/optimization but instead to use the
existing tools for parallel compilation, and for us to continue to improve
those tools.
--
John A. Tamplin
Software Engineer (GWT), Google
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http://groups.google.com/group/Google-Web-Toolkit-Contributors
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