Re: Next gettext official build

[Bruno Haible]

[CCing bug-gettext, since this is an important matter]

Hi,

Ian wrote:
> 
> I am a developer in one of the many Python projects on GitHub.  Our project
> has started implementing Python f-strings across our code and have bumped
> into the gettext text extraction issue for translated strings within
> f-strings.  We note that you have already addressed the issue in your commit
> made on 5-Dec-2023.
> 
> In order to plan for how best to manage our f-string code updates, I am
> writing to ask when you might expect to have the next official release of
> the gettext system?
> 
> Our production version of Python is currently based on 3.11 but we plan to
> move to 3.12 very soon, any day now, and would like to make a concerted
> effort at the f-string conversions.  We run the translation string
> extractions via a GitHub action.  It is unlikely that GitHub will update
> gettext until your next official release.  Hence this enquiry to see when
> such an update may happen.
> 
> I hope you can advise us when you think that the next version of gettext
> will become available.
> 
> Thank you, in advance, for any information you may be able to provide.

The feature that you mention — Python f-string support in xgettext — is
available in the GNU gettext git repository, as you noted.

For ease of consumption, tarballs are being published every week, here:
https://gitlab.com/gnu-gettext/ci-distcheck
These are good quality snapshots: If the unit tests did not all succeed,
the snapshot would not be published.

You _do_ get the benefits of Free Software by being able to use such a
modified source code at your liking. (The only limitation is that the
programs 'autopoint' and 'gettextize' do not work well from a snapshot,
due to technical reasons. But 'xgettext' runs perfectly.)

When you say
   "We run the translation string
    extractions via a GitHub action.  It is unlikely that GitHub will update
    gettext until your next official release."
you make it sound like you were dependent on decisions that GitHub makes.

If that were the case, it would be a big pitfall for you. You would be
denied the benefits of Free Software. As a consequence, my advice would
be avoid using GitHub actions.

However, it seems to me that the common way to work with GitHub actions
is to work in two steps:
  1) Create a VM image that contains exactly the software packages that
     you want to have available during the execution of the actions.
  2) Use this VM image for the actions.
See [1][2][3] for details.
In this scenario, you can simply put binaries of the GNU gettext snapshot
into the VM image.

Thus you are not bound by GitHub's choices, and you don't need to wait until
the next GNU gettext release.

     Bruno

[1] 
https://docs.github.com/en/actions/using-github-hosted-runners/about-github-hosted-runners/about-github-hosted-runners
[2] 
https://github.com/actions/runner-images/blob/main/docs/create-image-and-azure-resources.md
[3] 
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/developer/github/build-vm-image?tabs=userlevel%2Cprincipal