[v9rc3] Fresh manual install with French selected language error

[christophey2k]

Zend \ I18n \ Exception \ RuntimeException
The language file /application/languages/fr_FR/LC_MESSAGES/messages.mo for French (France) has 2 plural forms instead of 3.

just after selecting French language in the installation menu.

[mlocati]

That's an issue I'm aware of.

The problem is the following:

1. Concrete uses gettext/languages to manage the language plural rules (for example, English has 2 plural forms, Japanese 1, Arabic 5)
2. gettext/languages uses the Unicode CLDR data
3. I've recently updated gettext/languages so that it now uses the latest version (39) of the CLDR data
4. CLDR 39 changed the number of plural rules for French from 2 to 3
5. The Concrete translation server uses an older version of gettext/languages, where the number of plurals is 2
6. When Concrete 9 fetches French language files from the translation server, it expects that they have 3 plural cases, but only 2 are received.

I've been thinking for a solution for a while, but I still haven't found a satisfying one...

[mlocati]

Ok, I think I found a solution.

Since #7204 got merged (that is, since concrete5 8.5.0), Concrete is able to load translation files with more plural cases than the expected ones (see here).

So, we can safely update the data provided by translate.concretecms.org for French.

Here's what I'd do on the translation server (obviously we'd need to take a backup first).

1. Be sure that it uses the latest gettext/languages version (that is, ^2.8.1)
2. Update the database with the following queries:

   START TRANSACTION
   ;
   UPDATE CommunityTranslationLocales SET
   	pluralForms = 'a:3:{i:0;s:8:"one:0, 1";i:1;s:47:"many:1000000, 1c6, 2c6, 3c6, 4c6, 5c6, 6c6, …";i:2;s:71:"other:2~17, 100, 1000, 10000, 100000, 1c3, 2c3, 3c3, 4c3, 5c3, 6c3, …";}',
   	pluralFormula = '(n == 0 || n == 1) ? 0 : ((n != 0 && n % 1000000 == 0) ? 1 : 2)'
   WHERE
   	id = 'fr_FR'
   ;
   UPDATE CommunityTranslationTranslations SET
   	text2 = text1
   WHERE
   	locale = 'fr_FR'
   	AND text1 != ''
   	AND text2 = ''
   ;
   COMMIT
   ;

That way:

• translate.concretecms.org will provide French translation files with 3 plural cases
• concrete versions using 3 plural cases for French will be able to load them (because the number of plural cases is the expected one)
• concrete versions using 2 plural cases for French will be able to load them (because fixPlurals will lower the plural cases from 3 to 2)
• concrete versions using 3 plural cases for French will be able to load them (because the number of plural cases is the expected one)

[christophey2k]

The package php-gettext is currently not available for Ubuntu 20.04

[mlocati]

The package php-gettext is currently not available for Ubuntu 20.04

@christophey2k I'm referring to the gettext/languages package of packagist, not to an Ubuntu/Debian system package.

[nebuleu]

I'm facing the same problem with v8.5.6, released today, after updating a site from 8.5.5.

[diederik-maes]

Hi, is there a solution for this already or should I roll back to V 8.5.5 ?
Website is working fine in NL and EN but not in FR

[mlocati]

@diederik-maes You have to manually edit the file concrete/src/Localization/Translator/Loader/Gettext.php with these changes, or you have to wait until the next 8.5.x release

[diederik-maes]

@mlocati thanks for the fast reply.
Do I simply overwrite the whole content with the one you sent me or should I go look for just certain lines?

[diederik-maes]

I simply took the risk after a backup of the file and it seemed to have fixed the problem. Thanks again.

[mlocati]

Do I simply overwrite the whole content with the one you sent me or should I go look for just certain lines?

Yep, you can overwrite the file

[haeflimi]

@mlocati @aembler
This seems to be a rather problematic Issue that also affects v8 sites that are updated to 8.5.6. - Basically breaking all sites that use the french language.
What makes things worse is that rolling back to 8.5.5 isn't that easy (at leaset using composer) because of the dependency Issue with the phpass Library.

So, if you already know how how to solve this: What speaks against pushing out a 8.5.6.1 respectively 9.0.1 release asap, that fixes that issue? - In case that's no option... when is the next 8.x release planned?

tbh: It's a bit frustrating that we have to create a fork/ fixed version for EVERY concreteCMS minor release, because there is some known but unresolved Issue that breaks things.

[mlocati]

@haeflimi #9837 fixes the issue for v8

[haeflimi]

@mlocati
Yes, thank you for that!
I've already forked 8.5.6 to our own git& composer repositories, added your patch and rolled it out to a few affected client sites. - Looks like French is back on the menu. 👍
I still dislike that the core team doesn't seem to care enough to publish a new release that fixes that. - This will cause headaches to quite a few french speeking/ multilingual concreteCMS Users/Admins for no good reason.

[apaccou]

I agree with @haeflimi. We are waiting for a fix on the core to upgrade our sites from 8.5.5. I hope it will be quick.

[mlocati]

This should have been fixed by #9838