Since the beginning of the year, the Wikimedia Language team has enabled translation backports for MediaWiki core, extensions and skins hosted on Gerrit. On a weekly schedule compatible translations from master branch are backpored to all the supported release branches. Currently supported branches are 1.35–1.38.
Translation backports partially replace the purpose of the LocalisationUpdate extension. Wikimedia sites no longer use the extension, and to our knowledge only a few other users of the extension exist, because it needs manual setup to use.
We, the Language team, think that maintaining the LocalisationUpdate extension is no longer a good use of our time. We are asking for your feedback about the future of this extension.
We are planning to: * Remove LocalisationUpdate from the MediaWiki Language Extension Bundle starting from version 2022.07 * Remove us as maintainers of the extension
Additionally, based on the feedback, we are planning to either mark the extension as unmaintained, transfer maintenance to a new maintainer, or request the extension to be archived and removed from the list of extensions bundled with MediaWiki core if there is no indication that anyone uses this extension.
We request your feedback and welcome discussion on https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T300498. Please let us know if you are using this extension and whether you would be interested in maintaining it.
*Anticipated questions* Q: What about Wikimedia sites: does this mean they will not get frequent translation updates as they used to have?
A: We still think this is important, but we do not think the previous solution can be restored. We would like to collaborate on new solutions. One solution could be more frequent deployments.
-Niklas
I wonder if this would be a good candidate for event-based replication? One drawback is that current streams keep at most one month of data [1], but that might be extended for translations depending on the volume. Another workaround might be to combine regular releases with a streaming update, for example if a language bundle were released once per month.
This approach might also work well for Wikimedia sites, I wasn't sure from the final question in the email whether or not this is an outstanding technical gap.
Regards, [[mw:User:Adamw]]
[1] https://wikitech.wikimedia.org/wiki/Event_Platform/EventStreams#Historical_C...
On 4/27/22 1:22 PM, Niklas Laxström wrote:
Since the beginning of the year, the Wikimedia Language team has enabled translation backports for MediaWiki core, extensions and skins hosted on Gerrit. On a weekly schedule compatible translations from master branch are backpored to all the supported release branches. Currently supported branches are 1.35–1.38.
Translation backports partially replace the purpose of the LocalisationUpdate extension. Wikimedia sites no longer use the extension, and to our knowledge only a few other users of the extension exist, because it needs manual setup to use.
We, the Language team, think that maintaining the LocalisationUpdate extension is no longer a good use of our time. We are asking for your feedback about the future of this extension.
We are planning to:
- Remove LocalisationUpdate from the MediaWiki Language Extension
Bundle starting from version 2022.07
- Remove us as maintainers of the extension
Additionally, based on the feedback, we are planning to either mark the extension as unmaintained, transfer maintenance to a new maintainer, or request the extension to be archived and removed from the list of extensions bundled with MediaWiki core if there is no indication that anyone uses this extension.
We request your feedback and welcome discussion on https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T300498 https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T300498. Please let us know if you are using this extension and whether you would be interested in maintaining it.
*Anticipated questions* Q: What about Wikimedia sites: does this mean they will not get frequent translation updates as they used to have?
A: We still think this is important, but we do not think the previous solution can be restored. We would like to collaborate on new solutions. One solution could be more frequent deployments.
-Niklas
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The git-based approach is in my opinion superior because it works out of the box without any extra effort: neither MediaWiki releases nor Wikimedia deployments do not need to do anything special to receive translation updates.
The challenge has been and still is to some extent the frequency of the releases/deployments. Here is a summary: * Wikimedia-sites: weekly ** used to be months before LU and current deployment trains, used to be daily when LU was enabled, not affected by translation backports * Other sites following the git master branch: (almost) daily * Other sites following the git release branches: weekly ** for years they did not receive translation updates, fixed by translation backports * Other sites following the release tarballs: at least quarterly ** for years they did not receive translation updates, fixed by translation backports * Other sites using LocalisationUpdate: depends on the configuration, up to (almost) daily
-Niklas
ke 27. huhtik. 2022 klo 14.40 Adam Wight (adam.wight@wikimedia.de) kirjoitti:
I wonder if this would be a good candidate for event-based replication? One drawback is that current streams keep at most one month of data [1], but that might be extended for translations depending on the volume. Another workaround might be to combine regular releases with a streaming update, for example if a language bundle were released once per month.
This approach might also work well for Wikimedia sites, I wasn't sure from the final question in the email whether or not this is an outstanding technical gap.
Regards, [[mw:User:Adamw]]
[1] https://wikitech.wikimedia.org/wiki/Event_Platform/EventStreams#Historical_C...
On 4/27/22 1:22 PM, Niklas Laxström wrote:
Since the beginning of the year, the Wikimedia Language team has enabled translation backports for MediaWiki core, extensions and skins hosted on Gerrit. On a weekly schedule compatible translations from master branch are backpored to all the supported release branches. Currently supported branches are 1.35–1.38.
Translation backports partially replace the purpose of the LocalisationUpdate extension. Wikimedia sites no longer use the extension, and to our knowledge only a few other users of the extension exist, because it needs manual setup to use.
We, the Language team, think that maintaining the LocalisationUpdate extension is no longer a good use of our time. We are asking for your feedback about the future of this extension.
We are planning to:
- Remove LocalisationUpdate from the MediaWiki Language Extension Bundle starting from version 2022.07
- Remove us as maintainers of the extension
Additionally, based on the feedback, we are planning to either mark the extension as unmaintained, transfer maintenance to a new maintainer, or request the extension to be archived and removed from the list of extensions bundled with MediaWiki core if there is no indication that anyone uses this extension.
We request your feedback and welcome discussion on https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T300498. Please let us know if you are using this extension and whether you would be interested in maintaining it.
Anticipated questions Q: What about Wikimedia sites: does this mean they will not get frequent translation updates as they used to have?
A: We still think this is important, but we do not think the previous solution can be restored. We would like to collaborate on new solutions. One solution could be more frequent deployments.
-Niklas
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👋
I have a few questions about the tarball release and the Wikimedia sites.
On Wed, Apr 27, 2022 at 5:22 AM Niklas Laxström niklas.laxstrom@gmail.com wrote:
Since the beginning of the year, the Wikimedia Language team has enabled translation backports for MediaWiki core, extensions and skins hosted on Gerrit. On a weekly schedule compatible translations from master branch are backpored to all the supported release branches. Currently supported branches are 1.35–1.38.
What does that mean for maintenance for the extension for the released versions? Version 1.35 is an LTS that will go end-of-life in September 2023.
Anticipated questions Q: What about Wikimedia sites: does this mean they will not get frequent translation updates as they used to have? A: We still think this is important, but we do not think the previous solution can be restored. We would like to collaborate on new solutions. One solution could be more frequent deployments.
I want to be sure I understand this. Is it correct to say: new l10n messages will continue to be merged into the mainline branches of MediaWiki and extensions and will go live with the weekly train?
Feel free to redirect either of these questions to a task for more discussion.
Thanks! – Tyler
to 28. huhtik. 2022 klo 0.12 Tyler Cipriani (tcipriani@wikimedia.org) kirjoitti:
On Wed, Apr 27, 2022 at 5:22 AM Niklas Laxström niklas.laxstrom@gmail.com wrote:
Since the beginning of the year, the Wikimedia Language team has enabled translation backports for MediaWiki core, extensions and skins hosted on Gerrit. On a weekly schedule compatible translations from master branch are backpored to all the supported release branches. Currently supported branches are 1.35–1.38.
What does that mean for maintenance for the extension for the released versions? Version 1.35 is an LTS that will go end-of-life in September 2023.
I am not sure what your question is, but I'll provide two answers: 1) Backports are an automatic service for extensions, as long as the extension is not archived and is enabled on translatewiki.net. 2) The LocalisationUpdate extension, which is bundled with the tarballs, will continue to receive minimal support (security fixes) in the release branches unless there is a new maintainer who wants to do more than that.
Anticipated questions Q: What about Wikimedia sites: does this mean they will not get frequent translation updates as they used to have? A: We still think this is important, but we do not think the previous solution can be restored. We would like to collaborate on new solutions. One solution could be more frequent deployments.
I want to be sure I understand this. Is it correct to say: new l10n messages will continue to be merged into the mainline branches of MediaWiki and extensions and will go live with the weekly train?
This is correct. Backports are an additional service on top of the regular translation updates. MediaWiki core, extensions and skins in Gerrit will continue to receive almost daily translation updates. See for example https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/q/owner:L10n-bot+branch:master+project:mediaw...
-Niklas
Hi,
On 4/27/22 07:22, Niklas Laxström wrote:
Since the beginning of the year, the Wikimedia Language team has enabled translation backports for MediaWiki core, extensions and skins hosted on Gerrit. On a weekly schedule compatible translations from master branch are backpored to all the supported release branches. Currently supported branches are 1.35–1.38.
I believe I said this elsewhere, but this is AWESOME. Thank you and everyone else who worked on it.
Additionally, based on the feedback, we are planning to either mark the extension as unmaintained, transfer maintenance to a new maintainer, or request the extension to be archived and removed from the list of extensions bundled with MediaWiki core if there is no indication that anyone uses this extension.
I think it makes sense to unbundle from the tarball ASAP, for the reasons you mentioned and that it never really saw much uptake even after bundling.
Q: What about Wikimedia sites: does this mean they will not get frequent translation updates as they used to have?
A: We still think this is important, but we do not think the previous solution can be restored. We would like to collaborate on new solutions. One solution could be more frequent deployments.
I re-read through https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T206694 and I'm disappointed again at how long we've left l10nupdate functionality disabled. I don't really have anything else to say that hasn't already been said, other that I hope it'll be restored soon.
-- Legoktm
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