[Bug 788685] Re: Enable translating selected Ubuntu universe packages in Launchpad

[Kyle Nitzsche]

This is high priority for OEM group.

With this feature there is a much lower chance that customized versions
of Ubuntu that OEM creates will have translation regressions in the
field.

Without this feature, if we complete translations for a given package
(by modifying the package itself) and then if the package is released by
upstream in universe (still with incomplete translations), it will pre-
empt our version and the translations will revert. There could be
significant translation regressions for users.

We are requesting this feature in support Qin (Chinese Ubuntu) project
(https://blueprints.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+spec/desktop-o-qin-ubuntu-
china).

Thanks,
Kyle

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https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/788685

Title:
  Enable translating selected Ubuntu universe packages in Launchpad

Status in Launchpad itself:
  Triaged
Status in “pkgbinarymangler” package in Ubuntu:
  New

Bug description:
  Binary package hint: pkgbinarymangler

  Following a conversation at UDS and subsequent follow-ups with the OEM
  group, I'd like to request the possibility to enable the translation
  of selected universe packages in Launchpad.

  That would require:
  * Changes in pkgbinarymangler to create a whitelisting system to be able to selectively build 
  * Changes in Launchpad to stop ignoring translation imports coming from universe packages and start importing any translation tarball that pkgbinarymangler provides.

  Note that for source packages with upstream translations sharing
  enabled in Launchpad, this might not be even necessary (is there any
  check to ignore sharing if the Ubuntu source package comes from
  universe?), but it will be to import translations for packages not
  supported by upstream imports sharing (i.e. any project not based on
  intltool)

  Background notes
  ----------------

  (from conversations with pitti and danilo)

  In order to import universe translations and ship them in language packs we need:
  * A trivial patch to pkgbinarymangler and get its tests updated. Estimated time 15 m.
  * A small patch in Launchpad to stop ignoring universe translation tarball uploads.
  * Research on how the amount of universe translations compare with those from main. Results:
    - We ship a total of ~1.25 GB (1252512038 bytes) of translation data as the sum of all language packs
    - We ship a total of ~0.85 GB (845977204 bytes) of translation data as the sum of all universe packages
    - This means universe translations have roughly 70% of the size of the translations we ship in language packs
  * A decision from the research action above on whether to ship separate language packs or not
  * If we decide to ship separate universe language packs, a (not too hard) modification to langpack-o-matic to generate them.

  Other notes:
  * IIRC, from the previous UDS discussion in Brussels, we'd only want to enable this for selected universe packages, those which are well maintained, since this would introduce a delta with those packages coming from debian (the delta being the .pot building rules).
  * The discussion at UDS-O was not about mass-enabling universe translations, but rather the context was about enabling them for some packages in which we'd want to have more flexibility with translations and be able to ship updates in language packs without requiring a main inclusion request for the package. An example is the nanny package, which OEM distributes in their images.
  * So as we're not talking about enabling all universe, a start would be to add a way to whitelist selected universe packages and decide to ship them in the regular language packs
     * Implementation options:

       1. pkgbinarymangler whitelist: right now pkgbinarymangler already
          builds universe translation tarballs and Launchpad ignores them.
          Keeping this approach and importing selected packages would
          require a whitelist both in pkgbinarymangler and Launchpad.
       2. pkgbinarymangler universe disabled + whitelist: modify
          pkgbinarymangler to stop from building universe translations,
          build them only for main plus the whitelisted universe packages.
          Launchpad imports anything thrown at it and the whitelist needs
          to be maintained on pkgbinarymangler only.
       3. Special header for universe packages: add an
          "XS-Ubuntu-Use-Langpack: yes" header to the debian/control file
          of each package we want to import the translations of. It would
          require a modification in each package and in Launchpad (so that
          it reads the special header)