On 30/10/2012 Rob Weir wrote:
However, if we want to have a "beta release" of these lang packs, then this is not hard either: 1) Checked the PO files into the 3.4.x branch 2) Verify that they have correct license headers (assuming PO files allow a license header) 3) Generate a source package as a diff file of the branch against the 3.4.1 revision 4) Generate the binary packages, perhaps just lang packs, perhaps full installs 5) Sign the source package and binary packages 6) 72 hour release vote 7) Announce via blog, etc.
This seems good since it would allow to avoid distributing a 3.4.2 for the only sake of adding new languages: users would be disappointed to see a new 3.4.2 identical to 3.4.1 (since all changes and bugfixes are being applied to trunk only). The only problem I see is that we would then have the distributed 3.4.1 binaries in English compiled from the August sources, and the distributed 3.4.1 binaries in Danish compiled from the November sources. But, so long as the AOO34 branch is updated with new language files only, this approach can work.
About 1 and 2: PO files do allow for a license header, but are imported (with conversion) in the sources rather than simply copied, so steps 1 and 2 would be replaced by importing the PO files and clarify their provenance/license.
Of course, this all has overhead, especially for you, the release manager. So we don't want to repeat this too frequently.
This has overhead on the release managers, package providers, website maintainers, mirror operators and (to a lesser extent) on the whole community. But if we can enable new languages to appear within a few weeks, perhaps in batches of 3-5, this is positive news for the community engagement. Localization volunteers are the ones we are most prepared to handle at the moment, and an important resource for the project.
Regards, Andrea.
