[Dict-common-dev] po-debconf and dictionaries-common

[Agustín Martín Domingo]

Hi all,

Just to comment a problem that ispell or wordlist maintainers using
extra localized templates will find if they want to migrate to 
po-debconf, it is not compatible with the current dictionaries-common 
system. There are currently only two (source) packages that have local 
templates [I am bcc'ing their maintainers], and both still use the usual 
system, so the problem still did not appear, but might do in a future.

I am testing an experimental way of dealing with it from
installdeb-{ispell,wordlist}, with master templates in a file named
$package.po-master.templates if po-debconf is in use, and keeping the
old behavior if not. It is already in the CVS and seems to work, 
although I would like to test it more extensively before uploading. Of 
course, comments are welcome.

Cheers,

P.S. This is a draft of how the relevant entry in the policy document 
would be:

-----------------------------------
Note: If you are using debhelper and the the debhelper like scripts
provided by the dictionaries common system, the above templates file
will be automatically generated from information gathered from the info
file. If you do not need additional templates you do not have to worry
about this.

In this case, if you need additional templates, do not put them in a
file named debian/<package-name>.templates, since it will be overwritten
by the installdeb-* scripts. The exact way for doing that depends on
whether you use po-debconf or not to maintain localized versions of the
templates.

   * If you do not use po-debconf, put them in a file named
     debian/<package-name>.templates.in. installdeb-* will merge the
     templates and will install the merged templates file the right way.
     This system can coexist with localized templates like
     debian/<package-name>.templates.ru corresponding to localizations of
     your extra templates. dh_installdebconf, called internally from the
     installdeb-* scripts will merge them with the templates file that is
     auto generated at debian/<package-name>.templates

   * If you use po-debconf, your master templates file is expected to
     be named debian/<package-name>.po-master.templates. You do not need
     to merge the translations by yourself, since installdeb-* will do
     that for you. See the po-debconf manual page for details about how
     to create master templates file and po files. Remember that the
     templates file is now named
     debian/<package-name>.po-master.templates to avoid conflicts with
     the autogenerated one.

-- 
=====================================================================
Agustin Martin Domingo, Dpto. de Fisica, ETS Arquitectura Madrid,
(U. Politecnica de Madrid)  tel: +34 91-336-6536, Fax: +34 91-336-6554,
email:agmartin@aq.upm.es, http://corbu.aq.upm.es/~agmartin/welcome.html