serverguide.pot file and .po files

[Doug Smythies]

Please note: I originally sent this e-mail to Jeremy Bicha,
however he wanted me to send it to this list:

On 2013.02.28 08:54 Jeremy Bicha wrote:
> Could you send this email to the ubuntu-doc list and I'll
> take a look at answering it (may not be until the weekend)?
> We need to make sure that other people can figure this out
> too as there are too few people that understand how procedures
> like this work for the docs.

I have been struggling to understand the process of when to update
the serverguide.pot file and when and how the .po files get updated.
(Actually, I have been struggling to understand many many things.)

If we use as an example case [1] and look at the various files we
see that the serverguide.pot file became current as of that commit,
2012.10.22. However the various .po files were based on the previous
severguide.pot file of 2012.04.03 and seem to take quite awhile, a month
or more, to get updated. (Which makes sense, because doesn't someone
else in the chain of events actually update the .po file? (in launchpad,
not in the main BZR branch))

Does updating the serverguide.pot file, in the main BZR branch,
trigger a chain of events leading to new .po files, in launchpad?
I have updated the 12.04 serverguide.pot file twice in
the last few days. The first time was in response to [2], where it was
significantly outdated. The second time was just because I was accepting
a merge proposal anyway. Maybe I should have only updated it once, and
then leave it for a chunk of time.

Why do we bother to update the .po files during a commit, albeit rarely?
They are already out of date at the time of the commit anyhow, if the update
also includes an update to serverguide.pot at the same (which all of
the examples I have found do).

For this line from the example commit [1]: "Import translations from LP"
How does one do it?

[4] suggests that quantal has automated .po file import. As far as I 
have determined that is incorrect, and Jeremy did it manually.
However they are still out of date, as there is a one cycle lag
between serverguide.pot and the .po files. Is that correct?

. Doug Smythies

[1]
http://bazaar.launchpad.net/~ubuntu-core-doc/serverguide/quantal/revision/99
[2] https://bugs.launchpad.net/serverguide/+bug/1133121
[3] https://bugs.launchpad.net/serverguide/+bug/1108186