With all NMU work, I keep many copies of many packages on my local HD. However, I was recently still puzzled by my disk space slowly decreasing in the /home partition of my laptop. Today, I found why:

bubulle@mykerinos:~/travail/debian/nmu-debconf/INTENT/geneweb> du -s
~/.devscripts_cache/bts
1931348 /home/bubulle/.devscripts_cache/bts

As I do much work offline, I use the "bts cache" feature intensively to be able to access to bugs of packages I NMU for l10n. And, of course, I never clean this out. So, apprently, I need to make a major cleanup and I will claim 2GB out of my /home partition (which is 15GB). Should be good..:-)

Stats are progressing again, as expected, and they should continue to do so tomorrow as mysql-dfsg-5.0 and mixmaster were uploaded by Christian Hammers and Peter Palfrader respectively. 100% still hoped for Saturday, fingers crossed. Today's uploads: fontconfig (again as I screwed the first upload), towitoko and webcalendar. A giant call for updates has been sent for dbconfig-common, one of the biggest packages in those which use dbconfig-common (101 strings). A long delay is given to translators, given the size of the file, and Sean Finney will upload the package as of March 4th. I ponder sending a call for new translations for geneweb, my pet package, which "only" has 23 po-debconf translations..:)

No much progress on today's stats. Bump expected tomorrow because of: Today's uploads: portsentry, esmtp, php4-idn (switch to po-debconf), openslp, xbanner, uw-imap, twiki, gom (switch to po-debconf), wacom-tools, discover (switch to po-debconf), fontconfig...:-)..About 50 l10n bugs closed in 1 day, not that bad. As a consequence, the official stats should improve soon. I also sent patches to some maintainers who prefer uploading themselves such as mysql-dfsg-5.0 and mixmaster (switch to po-debconf).

We should now be at the lowest percentage...unless some dude decides also to break his debconf again. Two days until the first uploads to recover from portsentry, debsecan, mysql-dfsg-5.0 and twiki mistakes and going back towards 100% I collected many new translations today for these packages and this should bump the stats a lot, indeed. A quelque chose malheur est bon. Today's uploads: bitlbee only.

Swedish reaches 80%! A lot of work going on. We're now trying to recover damage done on mysql-dfsg-5.0 and portsentry. I posted a call for updates and translations are arriving at a very fast rate. So, the next target day for the 100% mark for French is February 22nd. Other call for updates are running for a few other packages, for various reasons. As a consequence, I'm flooded with translation updates. I hope I won't mess this up. Today's uploads and NMUs are lirc, norwegian and setserial. Interestingly, this noisy campaign is quietly pushing the idea of a "string freeze" during the freeze before a release. So, it seems that all this energy won't be invested in nothing.

...portsentry and mysql-dfsg-5.0 who both broke debconf translations yesterday. For portsentry this is even more sad as the last upload was done after I nagged the maintainer for l10n updates, which he promised me to fix. He finally did the upload several days after the moment he promised me he would do it....and he just introduced a "fix" to debconf templates in the same upload. :-( As a consequence, I now have one more l10n update to handle and thus I posted a call for updates to translators and I will NMU the package on Wednesday. Same problem for mysql-dfsg-5.0. For this one, translators are used to this as the debconf templates have changed 8 times in a year. NMU planned for February 21st as well. As a consequence, the target is still moving and I really wonder whether we will reach 100% some day. It is now 31 days since I began this campaign.

atokx2 is OK now. twiki keeps us away from 100% Sad news with yet another uncoordinated upload of mysql-dfsg-5.0 which, as usual includes debconf templates changes. I yelled out loudly on debian-release about this. Today's uploads were php-json-ext, openldap2, laptop-net.

As announced this morning, two more fuzzy strings popped up for French (and others). atokx2 will disappear as of tomorrow. twiki is being prepared now, but reaching 100% will be delayed by a few days, again. Today's uploads were atokx2, tmpreaper, pconsole.

So, today, as I was about to NMU atokx2, the twiki maintainer decided it would be time to slightly rewrite his debconf templates. And, therefore, we end up with two fuzzy strings (and still bad templates for that package anyway). So, the target moves again away from me and I will have to deal with a round of translation updates, templates rewrite and probably some more explanations with the maintainer. I don't doubt this will suceed but, of course, in the meantime, I can bet that another maintainer will have the weird idea to change his/her debconf stuff. It's really time for me to buy a real hard cluebat...:-) Meanwhile, I'll try hunting a few packages that are still not using po-debconf (except of course the desperate case of qmail).

Still one string left. I just sent a notice to the maintainer of atokx2 that I will very certainly NMU his package to fix Czech and French as he indeed didn't respect a deadline set during the last call for translation updates. So, no, I won't be ashamed to NMU for very recent bugs..:) Two NMUs today (php-memcache with Pierre Habouzit agreement, and nessus-plugins without Javier's agreement) and one yesterday (cnews, without news from Blars). One package is under heavy work, namely icedove, in cooperation with its maintainer, Alexander Sack. the templates have been rewritten and a call for updates AND new translations has been posted. In one week time, we got something like 13 bug reports for updates..:) I'm now reaching packages with pretty recent l10n bug reports on the NMU status page. So, quite often, the maintainers just do the uploads themselves.

ONE bloody string left Now, the last and very only package remaining that prevents French to reach 100% for po-debconf is atokx2. Will I resist to the temptation of an NMU? That is very unlikely. I'll make one attempt in trying to urge the maintainer whoc already has two pending translations after he uploaded the package without waiting for the deadline mentioned by translators.

No change today, mostly. Today's NMUs: faqomatic, calamaris, scsitools, cyrus21-imapd (most of them fix erroneous translation files here and there). Uncoordinated upload for atokx, wmmoonclock, atokx2. For all of them, I was having a pending call for translation updates, which the maintainer had been notified of....and which wasn't finished yet. Hurrah....:- atokx and wmmoonclock will improve the stats for French tomorrow...but we will be missing 100% because the atokx2 upload hadn't wait enough for us to send the update (and Steve has been slow.....). Really infortunate.

libapache-mod-backhand upload bumps our stats a little. New planned uploads (and 100%, hopefully) for next Thursday after the end of the call for translation updates I posted for wmmoonclock, atokx and atokx2. The list of "bad boys" is shortening down quickly, now. Today's NMUs: plan, atftp, mediamate. Today's uploads by maintainers after a little nag from me: gnumeric.

Curves are again with the "right" slope. Thanks to Neil Williams upload for dpkg-cross. Good news also for libapache-mod-backhand who has been uploaded today. We're now left with atokx, atokx2 and wmmoonclock. Today, I worked on remaining issues of various ways to "break" PO files in a few packages. This was affecting the import of material in i18n.debian.net which I intend to get as clean as possible. That will mean a small bunch of NMUs for these package as they currently require hacks in the sync scripts, which I don't like. Ah, and Rapha l Poir e got a very last medal in biathlon..:-)

...the maintainers of libapache-mod-backhand and wmmoonclock who just modified the debconf templates of their packages when sending uploads which were supposedly fixing the debconf translations. As a results, statistics are still going down, thanks to the excellent combined work of a few package maintainers. Highly motivating..:-( Still some progress for Czech, though, thanks to a few NMUs and uploads.

French is going the wrong direction as I already explained, but it's interesting to see that Czech continues to progress. This means that maintainers are quietly fixing translations for their packages, which is still good. Few activity today, mostly because of an hectic schedule, being away from home. I essentially completed the translation of atokx, broken by its maintainer, and dealt with several answers from maintainers after I proposed some NMUs. It seems that I'm now reaching packages which are really maintained..:-) Yesterday also saw the beginning of a big update for apt-listchanges. Translations are coming in in a rush and I hope that Pierre will like this. Some translators even volunteered to use the (still experimental, and for a while) Debian i18n server, hosted here, in Extremadura.

Holger Levsen made an interesting suggestion to me today: instead of whining against maintainers who do not interact with translators without explaining what I expect from maintainers, I should maybe explain what we expect. This makes pretty much sense indeed...:-) So, below is the mail I usually send to these maintainers:

Hello,
I just noticed new/modified debconf templates appearing for this
package.
I would like to suggest you to consider calling for translations when
introducing new debconf templates or changing the debconf templates in a
package or, if you prefer, to send a call for translations after uploading
the first version that introduces new templates or templates changes.
How to do this?
0) Install po-debconf
---------------------
If you test-build your package on your system, you shoud already have
it. Otherwise, consider apt-get installing it.
it will bring the needed utility.
1) Call for new translations
----------------------------
Just go to your package's build tree and use:
$ podebconf-report-po --call
This will propose you a generic mail which is to be sent to
debian-i18n@lists.debian.org and call for new translations.
This utility will mention existing translations to avoid duplicate
work.
It will also attach the needed material to this mail.
Please also think about giving a deadline to translators. We like
deadlines..:-)
2) Call for translation updates
-------------------------------
If your package already includes debconf translations (ie *.po files
in debian/po), please consider calling for translation updates if you
happen to change something in the templates...or just in case when you
release a new version.
This is done with the following command:
$ podebconf-report-po
This will build private mails to translators (ie people listed in
"Last-Translator" in the PO files) for translations that are
incomplete. These mails will included the needed PO file for each
translator.
3) Check for writing style compliance
-------------------------------------
The Debian i18n contributors have developed a set of suggestions for
the writing style of debconf templates, to give them an overall
consistency all around Debian. These writing style suggestions are
explained in the Developers Reference. Lintian also warns about common
writing style concerns.
If you change your templates to fit this, please consider 2), of
course..:-)

Of course, everybody will notice that this can be applied to any gettext-based internationalised software.

Some day, I feel like we, translators, are constantly hunting a moving target, which constantly moves away. So, yesterday, the very same day Neil Williams uploaded dpkg-cross with completed debconf translations for a few languages, including mine, the atokx maintainer uploaded a new version of his package. And, of course, as one would have expected, he felt the need to change the bloody debconf templates and, therefore, break AGAIN the translations. Not to mention the *awful* use of English in these templates. There are days like today where you really really need to have a virtual but very hard cluebat. Of course, I took it the diplomatic way and sent a polite notice asking for more consideration to translators next time.

Today, thanks to Julien Cristau's and David Nusinow's patience, I've been able to do my first "commit" to the XSF git repository, for the best benefit of French-speaking Canadian users (whether or not they do support Quebec autonomy), fixing #408482. So, I should officially declare myself as a deep hacker from now. Watch your back...

No change..:-) Some more activity today, launching the NMU proposals for some packages

• libapache-mod-backhand
• mgetty (but the maintainer will handle it himself, which is not a surprise)
• portsentry
• anon-proxy