Continuous translation

Weblate provides you great infrastructure for translation to closely follow your development. This way translators can work on translations whole time and are not forced to translate huge amount of new texts before release.

The complete process can be described in following steps:

  1. Developers make some changes and push them to the VCS repository.
  2. Optionally the translation files are updated (this depends on the file format, see Why does Weblate still show old translation strings when I’ve updated the template?).
  3. Weblate pulls changes from the VCS repository, see Updating repositories.
  4. Once Weblate detects changes in translations, translators will be notified based on their subscription settings.
  5. Translators make translations using Weblate web interface.
  6. Once translators are done, Weblate commits the changes to the local repository (see Lazy commits) and pushes them back if it has permissions to do that (see Pushing changes).

digraph translations { "Developers" [shape=box, fillcolor=lightgreen, style=filled]; "Translators" [shape=box, fillcolor=lightgreen, style=filled]; "Developers" -> "VCS repository" [label=" 1. Push "]; "VCS repository" -> "VCS repository" [label=" 2. Updating translations ", style=dotted]; "VCS repository" -> "Weblate" [label=" 3. Pull "]; "Weblate" -> "Translators" [label=" 4. Notification "]; "Translators" -> "Weblate" [label=" 5. Translate "]; "Weblate" -> "VCS repository" [label=" 6. Push "]; }

Updating repositories

You should set up some way how backend repositories are updated from their source. You can either use hooks (see Notification hooks) or just regularly run updategit (with selection of project or –all for updating all).

Whenever Weblate updates the repository, the Post-update script hooks are executed.

With Gettext po files, you might be often bitten by conflict in PO file headers. To avoid it, you can use shipped merge driver (examples/git-merge-gettext-po). To use it just put following configuration to your .gitconfig:

[merge "merge-gettext-po"]
  name = merge driver for gettext po files
  driver = /path/to/weblate/examples/git-merge-gettext-po %O %A %B

And enable its use by defining proper attributes in given repository (eg. in .git/info/attributes):

*.po merge=merge-gettext-po

Nota

This merge driver assumes the changes in POT files always are done in branch we’re trying to merge.

Distinto en la versión 2.9: This merge driver is automatically installed in case Weblate finds it (this currently works only for Git checkout as distutils package does not include examples).

Avoiding merge conflicts

To avoid merge conflicts you should control when to update translation files in upstream repository to avoid Weblate having changes on same file.

You can achieve this using Weblate’s Web API to force Weblate push all pending changes and lock translation while you are doing changes on your side.

The script for doing updates can look like:

# Lock Weblate translation
wlc lock
# Push changes from Weblate to upstream repository
wlc push
# Pull changes from upstream repository to your local copy
git pull
# Update translation files, this example is for Django
./manage.py makemessages --keep-pot -a
git commit -m 'Locale updates' -- locale
# Push changes to upstream repository
git push
# Tell Weblate to pull changes (not needed if Weblate follows your repo
# automatically)
wlc pull
# Unlock translations
wlc unlock

If you have multiple components sharing same repository, you need to lock them all separatey:

wlc lock foo/bar
wlc lock foo/baz
wlc lock foo/baj

Nota

The example uses Weblate Client, which will need configuration (API keys) to be able to control Weblate remotely. You can achieve same using any HTTP client instead of wlc, eg. curl, see Weblate’s Web API.

Automatically receiving changes from GitHub

Weblate comes with native support for GitHub. To receive notifications on every push to GitHub repository, you just need to enable Weblate Service in the repository settings (Integrations & services) as shown on the image below:

../_images/github-settings.png

To set the base URL of your Weblate installation (for example https://hosted.weblate.org) and Weblate will be notified about every push to GitHub repository:

../_images/github-settings-edit.png

You can also use generic Webhook, in that case the Payload URL would have to be full path to the handler, for example https://hosted.weblate.org/hooks/github/.

Automatically receiving changes from Bitbucket

Weblate has support for Bitbucket webhooks, all you need to do is add webhook which triggers on repository push with destination to /hooks/bitbucket/ URL on your Weblate installation (for example https://hosted.weblate.org/hooks/bitbucket/).

../_images/bitbucket-settings.png

Automatically receiving changes from GitLab

Weblate has support for GitLab hooks, all you need to do is add project web hook with destination to /hooks/gitlab/ URL on your Weblate installation (for example https://hosted.weblate.org/hooks/gitlab/).

Pushing changes

Each project can have configured push URL and in such case Weblate offers button to push changes to remote repository in web interface. Weblate can be also configured to automatically push changes on every commit.

If you are using SSH to push, you will need to have a key without a passphrase (or use ssh-agent for Django) and the remote server needs to be verified by you via the admin interface first, otherwise pushing will fail.

The push options differ based on used Version control integration, please check that chapter for more details.

Nota

You can also enable automatic pushing changes on commit, this can be done in Component configuration.

Ver también

See Accessing repositories for setting up SSH keys and Lazy commits for information about when Weblate decides to commit changes.

Pushing changes from Hosted Weblate

For Hosted Weblate there is dedicated push user registered on GitHub, Bitbucket and GitLab (with username weblate and named Weblate push user). You need to add this user as a collabolator and give him permissions to push to your repository. Let us know when you’ve done so and we will enable pushing changes from Hosted Weblate for you.

Merge or rebase

By default Weblate merges upstream repository into its own. This is safest way in case you also access underlying repository by other means. In case you don’t need this, you can enable rebasing of changes on upstream, what will produce history with less merge commits.

Nota

Rebasing can cause you troubles in case of complicated merges, so carefully consider whether you want to enable them or not.

Interacting with others

Weblate makes it easy to interact with others using its API.

Ver también

Weblate’s Web API

Lazy commits

Default behaviour (configured by LAZY_COMMITS) of Weblate is to group commits from same author into one if possible. This heavily reduces number of commits, however you might need to explicitly tell to do the commits in case you want to get VCS repository in sync, eg. for merge (this is by default allowed for Managers group, see Access control).

The changes are in this mode committed once any of following conditions is fulfilled:

  • somebody else works on the translation
  • merge from upstream occurs
  • import of translation happens
  • translation for a language is completed
  • explicit commit is requested

You can also additionally set a cron job to commit pending changes after some delay, see commit_pending and Running maintenance tasks.

Processing repository with scripts

You can customize way how Weblate manipulates with repository by set of scripts. These include Post-update script, Pre-commit script, Post-commit script, Post-add script and Post-push script and are briefly described in Component configuration.

Their naming quite clearly tells when given script is executed. The commit related scripts always get one parameter with full path to the translation file which has been changed.

The script is executed with the current directory set to root of VCS repository for given component.

Additionally following environment variables are available:

WL_VCS

Used version control system.

WL_REPO

Upstream repository URL.

WL_PATH

Absolute path to VCS repository.

WL_BRANCH

Nuevo en la versión 2.11.

Repository branch configured in the current component.

WL_FILEMASK

File mask for current component.

WL_TEMPLATE

File name of template for monolingual translations (can be empty).

WL_NEW_BASE

Nuevo en la versión 2.14.

File name of the file which is used for creating new translations (can be empty).

WL_FILE_FORMAT

File format used in current component.

WL_LANGUAGE

Language of currently processed translation (not available for component level hooks).

WL_PREVIOUS_HEAD

Previous HEAD on update (available only for POST_UPDATE_SCRIPTS).

Post update repository processing

Post update repository processing can be used to update translation files on the source change. To achieve this, please remember that Weblate only sees files which are committed to the VCS, so you need to commit changes as a part of the script.

For example with gulp you can do it using following code:

#! /bin/sh
gulp --gulpfile gulp-i18n-extract.js
git commit -m 'Update source strings' src/languages/en.lang.json

Pre commit processing of translations

In many cases you might want to automatically do some changes to translation before it is committed to the repository. The pre commit script is exactly the place to achieve this.

Before using any scripts, you need to list them in PRE_COMMIT_SCRIPTS configuration variable. Then you can enable them at Component configuration configuration as Pre commit script.

It is passed single parameter consisting of file name of current translation.

The script can also generate additional file to be included in the commit. This can be configured as Extra commit file at Component configuration configuration. You can use following format strings in the filename:

%(language)s
Language code

Example - generating mo files in repository

Allow usage of the hook in the configuration

PRE_COMMIT_SCRIPTS = (
    '/usr/share/weblate/examples/hook-generate-mo',
)

To enable it, choose now hook-generate-mo as Pre commit script. You will also want to add path to generated files to be included in VCS commit, for example po/%(language)s.mo as Extra commit file.

You can find more example scripts in examples folder within Weblate sources, their name start with hook-.