[gentoo-dev] Re: Disabling locale at emerge output

[Ryan Hill]

On Wed, 27 Apr 2011 18:26:02 +0200
Jeroen Roovers <jer@g.o> wrote:

> On Wed, 27 Apr 2011 02:47:46 -0600
> Ryan Hill <dirtyepic@g.o> wrote:
>
> > > Are you saying you are setting up the tree-wide project that
> > > automatically translates LC_MESSAGES? Round of applause!
> >
> > Nope, but I am raising donations to fund an instructive manual on the
> > usage of the NEEDINFO resolution.
>
> As already explained, requesting information and temporarily closing
> bug reports happens a lot already, but usually greatly stalls a
> bug's resolution. Developers have to make time to investigate the
> problem and lose time when they have to wait for additional information
> and need to reschedule.

Maybe I'm just lucky, but the number of times I've had a bug where such a
conversation had to take place could be counted on my toes.  I imagine being
a bug wrangler you see it far more often, but what are we talking here?
1/100?  1/500?  Can you compare this to the number of times that someone
doesn't include emerge --info, which has a similar halting effect?

And yes, the times I have gotten non-english errors in bug reports I have
found it annoying.  It just hasn't happen often enough to have driven me
crazy, which may be the case here.

> > Que?  Are you saying that because portage is in English that people
> > that don't speak English don't use Gentoo?  I would have to disagree.
>
> Obvious straw man.

Working for the font team a couple years ago I went to some of the
language-specific mailing lists asking if there was any language-specific
fonts people required that weren't yet in Gentoo.  I had to work through
interpreters because many of the people I wanted to talk to didn't speak a
lick of English.

> > imagine how not being able to get any build output you can read
> > might feel, especially if the reason is only because some dev
> > couldn't be bothered to occasionally ask someone to repost an error
> > message in English.
>
> You underestimate the vastness of my imagination.

Okay...  I'm not actually sure what that means.

> > This reminds me of the time someone wanted to ban inline `emerge
> > --info` postings in bugzilla (ie. attachments only) because they
> > found scrolling through them bothersome.
>
> I think you mean the time when I was requesting ATs not to post such
> information on stabilisation bugs just to confirm it was alright to
> stabilise.

No, it wasn't you.  I would have remembered.  This person was talking in the
general sense.  And it was a silly reason, not like yours.

> You still haven't elaborated on the need to read build output in
> non-English, btw. You could have argued for non-English users' rights,
> or pushed for that LC_MESSAGES auto-translation project (I wasn't
> kidding), or you could have argued for a bug reporting tool that
> includes all the right information in the right language automatically.

I _am_ arguing for non-English user's rights.  That's the whole reason I'm
here, annoying you and whatnot.

> When someone has to read the English error output that sys-apps/portage
> tacks onto the end of the real error (possibly output long gone from
> the scroll buffer because it was an early sub-make that failed),
> doesn't want to go all technical and find that error message, and
> therefore needs to be asked to attach the entire thing or does that of
> her own accord, then why should the actual error message
> ("foo/include/header.h: No such file or directory", in Simplified
> Chinese) be printed in a language the developer cannot read?

See, you're thinking primarily in terms of bugzilla.  Like the only reason
someone would want to see this stuff is to paste it to a bug report for a
developer to look at.  I'm saying someone who doesn't speak English at all
(who won't be filing bugs btw) might want to be able to understand the error
the compiler just dumped on them without needing a translator.

But whatever, I appear to be the only person who has a problem with this.


-- 
fonts, gcc-porting,                  it makes no sense how it makes no sense
toolchain, wxwidgets                           but i'll take it free anytime
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