[PATCH] sideband: mark "remote error:" prefix for translation

On Wed, Aug 05, 2020 at 09:28:42AM -0700, Junio C Hamano wrote:

Jeff King [off-list ref] writes:

quoted

By the way, grepping for "remote error:" shows that when we get an error
over sideband 3 we produce the same message but _don't_ translate it.
That seems inconsistent.

IOW

    die(_("remote error: %s"), buf + 1);

in sideband.c?  I think it makes sense.

Yes. Patch is below so we don't forget about it. I'm not sure if we
ought to be going further, though. The "remote:" prefix for sideband 2
isn't translated either. It would be easy to do so, but it's much more
lego-like. We don't have "remote: %s" ever as a string. We just have
"remote:", and then we maybe_colorize_sideband() the result.

Would that be annoying for translators, especially with RTL languages?
Do people actually want to see "remote:" (or "remote error:" for that
matter) translated, or does mixing translated and untranslated messages
on one line end up more confusing? I'm out of my element here, as I
wouldn't ever use the translations myself.

IIRC, the current thinking is to let the remote side localize their
message before sending them over the wire and we'll worry about how
we let the receiving end tell what l10n it wants later.  So "remote
error:" prefix may have to be translated on receiving end and the
remainder of the line, which is already localized, can just be
interpolated.

Yeah, that part makes sense. The local client shouldn't be translating
what it gets from the server (and won't, because it is filled in via the
%s). Adding a capability for preferred language would be easy, though I
imagine it might be irritating in practice.  As a server admin, I want
to see everything in the C locale; but what gets shown to users and what
might get dumped into server logs is not well specified in Git. I have a
feeling that just setting LANG based on the user's request would be a
bit broad.

Anyway, here's the patch. It doesn't seem to cause any test failures,
even with GETTEXT_POISON. :)

-- >8 --
Subject: [PATCH] sideband: mark "remote error:" prefix for translation

A Git client may produce a "remote error:" message (along with whatever
error the other side sent us) in two places:

  - when we see an ERR packet

  - when we're using a sideband and see sideband 3

We can't reliably translate the message the other side sent us, but we
can do so for our own prefix. However, we translate only the ERR-packet
case but not the sideband-3 case. Let's make them consistent (by marking
both for translation).

Signed-off-by: Jeff King <redacted>
---
I really just care about consistency between the two spots, so swapping
this to translate neither would be to me, too. I guess this does create
inconsistency with "remote: " though. Not sure if it's incremental
forward progress, or just a bad idea. ;)

 sideband.c | 2 +-
 1 file changed, 1 insertion(+), 1 deletion(-)

diff --git a/sideband.c b/sideband.c
index ef851113c4..0a60662fa6 100644
--- a/sideband.c
+++ b/sideband.c

@@ -147,7 +147,7 @@ int demultiplex_sideband(const char *me, char *buf, int len,
 	switch (band) {
 	case 3:
 		if (die_on_error)
-			die("remote error: %s", buf + 1);
+			die(_("remote error: %s"), buf + 1);
 		strbuf_addf(scratch, "%s%s", scratch->len ? "\n" : "",
 			    DISPLAY_PREFIX);
 		maybe_colorize_sideband(scratch, buf + 1, len);

-- 
2.28.0.520.g10e2ce7e11