Source package maintainers can't download all translations

[Данило Шеган]

As part of a fix #209859 to restrict 'download all', we've excluded package maintainers as well.

This hurts, most notably, Matthew East, who's maintaining ubuntu-docs translations through Launchpad.

Since we can't find out who the sourcepackage maintainer for a particular release is, I suggest we allow 'Download all translations' for each distribution "driver" team member, and perhaps even all of "members", as listed on Ubuntu start page: https://edge.launchpad.net/ubuntu

As a workaround until we fix this, we can temporarily add Matthew either to the Ubuntu Translation Coordinators team, or to Launchpad Translation Admins team.

[Данило Шеган (danilo)]

It's important to fix this asap, but it can live on edge as well.

[Matthew East (mdke)]

I'm not sure that "driver" or "member" solution would necessarily be ideal as a matter of principle, because neither group has much relation to the need to download translations. (I say that even though being in both groups, it would solve my individual issue).

If it's not possible to allow anyone to download translations, it's probably an acceptable solution to grant access just to the ubuntu-dev team.

Although I'm not in the ubuntu-dev team, I think my particular problem can be solved by adding me to the Ubuntu Translation Coordinators team (I didn't know that team existed) as I'm one of the more active people in the Ubuntu translation mailing list, admin the list and manage translation of Ubuntu documentation.

[Данило Шеган (danilo)]

The issue the bug #209859 was about was about everyone who wanted to download any translations requesting them all. Granted, it was more a problem of a bad UI, but we've ended up with huge export queue backlogs as a result. Until UI is fixed properly (which requires going through the entire workflow, so it's not a trivial issue, even if it's trivial from the coding perspective), we don't want to have everyone request full downloads of translations, especially considering that they are very unlikely to need them.

For example, you are a very special case of someone manually maintaining translatable package in Launchpad, and MOTU members might be as well (but they are likely to be covered by a single-template tarball download).

My reasoning to do that for "drivers" and/or "members" is that they are likely the Ubuntu packagers as well, and they are the only ones who might need full translations download anyway. In practice, I can't find any other good reason to fetch a full tarball of all templates and translations (maybe also for upstream maintainers).

I've added you to the team (it's set as the owner of Ubuntu translators group: https://translations.edge.launchpad.net/+groups/ubuntu-translators). In general, Arne is handling stuff like that, so hoping I haven't done this outside the procedure, he might dislike you being in the team even with my warm recommendation to keep you there. Please check if you can see the link now.

[Matthew East (mdke)]

Hi Danilo,

On Mon, Oct 13, 2008 at 3:21 PM, Данило Шеган <email address hidden> wrote:
> The issue the bug #209859 was about was about everyone who wanted to
> download any translations requesting them all. Granted, it was more a
> problem of a bad UI, but we've ended up with huge export queue backlogs
> as a result. Until UI is fixed properly (which requires going through
> the entire workflow, so it's not a trivial issue, even if it's trivial
> from the coding perspective), we don't want to have everyone request
> full downloads of translations, especially considering that they are
> very unlikely to need them.

That makes sense.

> My reasoning to do that for "drivers" and/or "members" is that they are
> likely the Ubuntu packagers as well, and they are the only ones who
> might need full translations download anyway.

Ubuntu packagers are in the "ubuntu-dev" group. The "drivers" group is
much more limited (just those making policy decisions for Ubuntu), and
the "members" group is much bigger and includes all those who
contribute to Ubuntu in a substantial way, including documentation,
artwork, marketing, translation, etc. So the drivers don't need this
feature, and the members are probably too large a group to have it.

Since Ubuntu doesn't have the concept of "maintainers" for each
package, the best and most principled option is to allow anyone in
"ubuntu-dev" to access this feature. These are the people who might
wish to export translations and include them in a package.

> I've added you to the team (it's set as the owner of Ubuntu translators
> group: https://translations.edge.launchpad.net/+groups/ubuntu-
> translators). In general, Arne is handling stuff like that, so hoping I
> haven't done this outside the procedure, he might dislike you being in
> the team even with my warm recommendation to keep you there.

I don't think there can be any objection.

> Please
> check if you can see the link now.

I can, thanks.

--
Matthew East
http://www.mdke.org
gnupg pub 1024D/0E6B06FF

[Данило Шеган (danilo)]

Ok, I've figured a way to allow this for all package uploaders, so this should be in in the next Launchpad release for late November.

[Данило Шеган (danilo)]

Reviewed by intellectronica, waiting for PQM to open.

[Данило Шеган (danilo)]

Fixed in RF 7228.

[Adi Roiban (adiroiban)]

Hi,

Can we extend this exception to allow other people to download all templates, for all languages for a package?

Maybe create a special group for this exception.

I'm trying to help Matthew at exporting the ubuntu-docs translations from Rosetta.

I would like to do it more often and create HTML pages as a way to check translations from Rosetta.

Right now I got 19 emails, each containing a link to launchpad-export.tar.gz ,

Having to request and download archive will help me alot in scripting and automating this process.

Thanks!