Translating BOINC

The translation of BOINC involves several steps:

• Generate "templates" (.pot files) containing translatable strings from the BOINC source code.
• Import these templates into Pootle.
• Volunteers translate the strings in Pootle.
• Export the translations (*.po files) from Pootle to the BOINC Git repo
• Deploy the new translations.

BOINC is divided into the following components, each with its own template file:

Component	directory	Template file	Command
BOINC web site	doc/	BOINC-Web.pot	build_po.php
Project web site	html/user/	BOINC-Project-Generic.pot	html/ops/build_po_boinc.php
Client	client/	BOINC-Client.pot	build_po
Manager	clientgui/	BOINC-Manager.pot	build_po
Mac installer	mac_installer/	BOINC-Setup.pot	build_po
Android GUI	android/	BOINC-Android.pot	a2po export -v

All template files are stored in locale/templates/ in the BOINC repo. The translations for language X are stored in locale/X/.

Software releases

Translation activity takes place in trunk. When a release branch (client or server) is created, its translations are the contents of locale/ at that point. If translations change after that, or new translatable strings are added to the branch, we'll need to back-port changes to the .po files.

Template generation

If a faulty template file is committed to the BOINC repo and picked up by Pootle, all existing translations will be lost. Therefore manual validation is used. The process is as follows:

• Once a day, a script build_pos is run as a cron job.

This script generates a template for each component, leaving the .pot file in the component directory. It then compares the .pot file with the one in locale/templates. If they differ (not counting comments) it sends an email to Rom and David.

• On receiving this email, Rom and/or David examines the new template file.

If it's valid, they move it to locale/templates and commit it.

Translation

Twice daily a cron job (~boincam/pootle/update.sh) pulls modified templates from the BOINC repo and adds them to the Pootle database.

Various ​Pootle Commands.

update.sh should perform the following functions for each supported pootle project (boinctrunk, setiweb):

1. Commit to VCS all existing changes to PO files. (pootle command: commit_to_vcs)
2. Update from VCS all templates for each project. (pootle command: update_from_vcs)
3. Apply template changes to all projects/languages. (pootle command: update_against_templates)
4. Compile all catalogs used by the client software into MO files. (Execute: boinc/locale/updatetrans.sh)
5. Commit to VCS all existing changes to MO files. (git command: commit)

All pootle operations are limited to just the boinc/locale directory structure. Projects are expected to have a similar structure.

'boinc/locale/updatetrans.sh' compiles BOINC-Manager.po, BOINC-Client.po, BOINC-Web.po, and BOINC-Setup.po if the datestamps on the po and mo file are different. After completing the compilation process it touches both files.

Post Translation Updates

Converting the Android PO file back into the native Android localization system XML files involves executing:

a2po export -v

Deployment

The BOINC web site

The BOINC web code expects translation files to be in ../languages/translations/. On the BOINC web server, this directory contains symbolic links from X.po to ../../locale/X/BOINC-Web.po.

'When we add a new language, we need to add a new symbolic link.'

Deploying new translations requires running the script doc/update_translations.php, which converts the .po files to a PHP translation array. This is done from cron.

Project web sites