532524 - add cron jobs to svn up .po files periodically

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(Webtools Graveyard :: Verbatim, defect)

Description

[Fred Wenzel [:wenzel]]

The .po files in Pootle are not updated automatically. Instead the localizers need to remember clicking the "update from version control" button.

We should consider adding cron jobs to update the files from SVN periodically.

What about merge conflicts, though?

Comment 1

[Friedel Wolff]

Merge conflicts is a big issue, since it could render the files unusable by Pootle. Ideally we should factor out the merging code to the Translate Toolkit or at least a command line client in Pootle so that it can be done from cron or similar. My guess is that many teams might have simple setups where there might not be lots of people working both on Pootle and directly in SVN.

Comment 2

[Dwayne Bailey]

I think Friedel's suggestion is the best approach.  With Pootle we took the position that we don't want to mess with people messing in SVN.  So an update will always merge.

With code factored out this could be added as a manage.py task that can then be scripted in cron.

Comment 3

[Milos Dinic [:Milos]]

Let's get some traction to this. Fred,

Maybe we could do a cron and check against a locale in verbatim first to see if:

* there are some localizers logged in
* there was some activity ~5 mins ago
* `svn st` has output

and if any of those is met, maybe we shouldn't run update.

What do you think?

Comment 4

[Dwayne Bailey]

Two things have made it into Pootle 2.2 that should make this easier:

1) Separate checkouts: we keep the VC checkout separate from the working files.  This means that VC is always pristine and this limits issues.
2) Two new manage command allow update and commit.

So a cron job can be created to periodically update with no risk of merge conflicts.  

I'm leaving this open for an actual implementation.  Best to schedule when we deploy.