[Gimp-docs] spurious .po updates

[Sven Neumann]

Hi,

On Mon, 2009-01-19 at 18:04 +0100, Ulf-D. Ehlert wrote:

> Obviously updating po files automatically is a double-edged sword, but 
> without that feature working will be less comfortable.

I can only speak for what I know about how po files are handled in an
application like GIMP. There the po files used to be updated (and the
updated files committed) on 'make dist'. In other words, when making a
release. This was changed some years ago because it used to cause a lot
of trouble for translators. Imagine a translator working on the po file.
After spending several hours, if not days, she wants to commit the
changed file to SVN. If someone else changed the file in the meantime,
the result is a terrible conflict which is rather difficult to resolve.
This means losing a lot of work. Quite often this also means losing a
translator. You should definitely try to avoid that.


Sven