Re: [gentoo-dev] Dropping localepurge

[Mart Raudsepp]

On E, 2012-01-30 at 04:19 -0500, Philip Webb wrote:
> 120129 Mike Frysinger wrote:
> > On Sunday 29 January 2012 00:01:50 Philip Webb wrote:
> >> Below is the output from 'localepurge' after this week's system update.
> >> Please don't drop it till 'should' does = 'does'.
> > the vast majority of that output comes from like 3 or 4 packages.
>
> All of it comes from  6  packages which I recently installed/updated :
>  evince gdk-pix-buf rekonq xkeyboard-config gnome-doc-utils sane-backends
> The total rubbish cleaned out for these  6  was  > 9 MB .
> The last  3  belong to major projects -- X Gnome Sane -- ,
> which suggests that other pkgs they manage may suffer the same defect.

Do you even have LINGUAS set in /etc/make.conf or something?
Because at least evince, gdk-pixbuf, xkeyboard-config and
gnome-doc-utils DO honor LINGUAS.

All GNOME packages that use intltool (that is pretty much everything
except a few low-level libraries) honor LINGUAS much more than
localepurge would ever be able clean afterwards. For example, .desktop
files only have translation lines for languages listed in LINGUAS. Same
for gconf and dconf schemas. Also all end-user documentation
in /usr/share/gnome/help/appname/lang_code/

> > file bugs if you want things to actually get fixed.
>
> No, that's not the way it should be handled.
> Filing bugs --  6  of them in this case -- is no guarantee of attention even,
> let alone action to fix the problem.  Moreover, if it's fixable by Gentoo,
> the dev involved should do it as a matter of course without needing a bug.

Per above, we would close at least 4 of those bugs as INVALID or at
least OBSOLETE (if some older version had it wrong).
At least in GNOME we feel quite strong about things properly honoring
LINGUAS per old standard GNU conventions. This means installing ALL
translations if LINGUAS is unset, and none if LINGUAS is set to an empty
string.

> There is a perfectly effective script which cleans up the mess
> & the only problem with it seems to be temporary lack of a maintainer,
> who is not essential anyway if there's nothing which needs fixing
> & should not be difficult to replace with a simple request for a volunteer.
>
> Please leave 'localepurge' where it is.

Above said, I also do find a use on some systems for localepurge, to
catch the packages that don't honor it.
Though for embedded deployments I might as well not include the
non-interesting language directories in the image.


Best,
Mart Raudsepp