Incorrect claim of c-format in POT file

[Adam Collard]

Generating po/snappy.pot from snapd source using update-pot incorrectly claims that some strings are c-format[0] when they are not (e.g. they use golang fmt's %q).

This then leads to confusion in tools which expect c-format and contributes to issues like https://forum.snapcraft.io/t/strange-trailing-text-from-snap-login-in-en-gb-locale/1511

[0] https://www.gnu.org/software/gettext/manual/html_node/PO-Files.html

[Adam Collard (adam-collard)]

See also bug 1707890 (LP bug that contributed to the strange behaviour)

[Michael Vogt (mvo)]

I filed a bug upstream about this: https://savannah.gnu.org/bugs/index.php?52788

It seems like we have some options:
1. Switch our internal i18n/xgettext-go to emit "go-format" instead of "c-format". From the feedback I got from the LP developers it seems we will probably lose some sanity checks in launchpad translations if we do that (gettext_check_messages.py in the LP source).
2. Implement golang support in upstream gettext. I looked into this and it looks like its quite a bit of work, we will have to implement our own x-golang.c and format-golang.c.