Hidden components

[atallahade]

From what I saw on the FAQ, I should be able to translate several branches at once. To do that, I tried to create two components with the same settings except for the branch that are different. Here are the problems I have:

1. I need to hide one of the component to make it easier for users to make translations
2. I tried to set the source code repository with a link to the other component (i.e. weblate://project/component) but it didn't seems to work (only one branch was being used)

[nijel]

No, you need to have separate checkout for each branch and thus you can not share the component VCS.

[atallahade]

@nijel It will not be very efficient if I do that unfortunatly. Do you have any other alternative?

[nijel]

No, weblate needs working copy for each branch. The only alternative with Git would be to use worktrees, but I don't think that would bring any significant benefits as Weblate already does swallow clones not fetching history of unrelated branches.

[atallahade]

Ok thanks, I think I'll stick with your solution then but it would have been nice to be able to hide components so users only see components with master branch.

[nijel]

As for hiding the component, how would you handle translations which are only in that component?

[atallahade]

In our case there is none so we don't need to handle the case.

[vmassol]

I don't think they should be hidden since that would prevent them being translated. However the UI could not advertise them as pro-eminently as the master translations so that users doing translations don't pick the wrong branch by error.

Another problem is the setup cost: whenever a new branch is created you need to create duplicate components for all of them (and remove them once the branch is deleted). I guess this could be automated somehow with scripting and using the weblate REST API?

@atallahade I think we need to automate the component creation in a script that will automatically discover all translation resources from a given github organization (or github repository, but less good) and automatically create a weblate component for them. Maybe using the weblate REST API?

@nijel is that doable with the weblate REST API?

[nijel]

This is currently not doable with the API (it doesn't allow to add components). It can be automated using import_json CLI though.

[atallahade]

@vmassol We can discover translation files with a cron job but we will need to scan every files of every repository to find out if they are used for translation or not. Also we need to decide which branch has to be used (probably with a pattern or something).
I've already made a script generating components in a json file (importable with the import_json command) which takes a file as an input where each line has:

1. The name of the component to be displayed
2. The relative path of the base translation file (from the root folder)
3. The URL of the git repository

[vmassol]

but we will need to scan every files of every repository to find out if they are used for translation or not

Either that or use a github hook to register/unregister components when translation files are added/removed from git... :) (ofc we'll need a one time script execution to import existing translation files).

I wonder if anyone has written such a hook already :)