[tbb-dev] langpacks tarball vs alpha/nightly builds

[Georg Koppen]

anonym:
> Hi, list!
> 
> [I'd prefer to do this over Gitlab MR, but my request for an account hasn't been accepted yet. So email it is.]

Could you try now?  I think your account got approved (sorry for the
trouble).

> Back when intrigeri added the generation of a tarball containing all langpacks it was decided to not do so for nightly and alpha builds, and to revisit if we decided we wanted it for those builds too:
> 
>     https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/32676#comment:6
> 
> Now I'd like to revisit that decision!
> 
> Let's first note that Firefox' translation system is pretty fragile (e.g. missing string => scary exception pop-up + broken functionality) which we have been bitten by a few times (i.e. we released something broken for some non-en_US locales). So testing is essential! Not having these langpacks tarball has the following negative consequences for Tails:
> 
> * Nightly builds: when a new Tor Browser major release is in the works, we prefer to start the integration work for Tails as early as possible, preferably starting no later than when the first build based on a new ESR is out (the changes in upstream Firefox is often a cause for problems on our side). This sometimes mean we need to use your nightly builds, like was the case for this 10.x cycle. Not having the langpacks mean that we only get to test the en_US locale, and thus our automated tests for the other locales will fail in our CI. I don't really have a problem with that failure spam, but it would be very sweet to know whether the basic functionality we automatically test for non-en_US locales work already at this stage.
> 
> * Alpha builds: The same problem as for nightly builds apply, but with an addition: before we release the Tails that will contain the major release of Tor Browser, we release a Tails release candidate with the last Tor Browser alpha (which is the best we can reasonably do at that stage). But if that alpha does not have langpacks, then the Tails testers can only test en_US, so we have no clue about the other locales. Actually, the first time we'll have all the langpacks will be when we release the final stable Tails with the final stable new major release of Tor Browser, which is too late.
> 
> So, can we please enable the generation of the langpack tarball for alpha and nightly builds? It seems it will only bloat each build ~15MB, which looks insignificant. Any other considerations?
> 
> If you agree with my proposal, I believe the attached patch implements it.

We want to keep test builds exempted, but otherwise this looks good.

Georg

> Cheers!
> 
> 
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