contrib/locale/push_locale: do not sort source-strings
What the developer wrote
Authored by SomberNight
contrib/locale/push_locale: do not sort source-strings
xgettext and related tools have a -s/--sort-output option, which results in the output being lexicographically sorted. The gettext maintainers recommend against using this option and even started deprecating it in some of their tools (xgettext included):
- with -s, source strings are lexicographically sorted in the .pot/.po files
- without -s, source string are output in the same order they are found in the code
- this way, translators have to do much fewer context switches when contributing translations
note that the qml part we have already *not* been sorting
What changed, and why it matters
This commit removes a sorting option from a script that prepares translation files. It changes how translation source strings are ordered to make life easier for human translators. There is no security relevance.
No security action needed. This is a routine developer-experience improvement.
Security signals we found
No strong security signals were identified.
Evidence from the diff
The patch removes the -s/--sort-output flag from the xgettext invocation in contrib/locale/push_locale.py. The resulting .pot/.po files will now list source strings in the order they appear in the codebase rather than lexicographically. This is a workflow/usability change for translators and has no effect on application behavior, attack surface, or generated binaries.
Changed components
contrib/locale/push_locale.pyInspect captured patch +2 / −1
diff --git a/contrib/locale/push_locale.py b/contrib/locale/push_locale.py
index b54c3a0..aeb038f 100755
--- a/contrib/locale/push_locale.py
+++ b/contrib/locale/push_locale.py
@@ -60,7 +60,8 @@ print("Found {} .py files to translate".format(len(files_list)))
# Generate fresh translation template
print('Generating template...')
-cmd = ["xgettext", "-s", "--from-code", "UTF-8", "--language", "Python", "--no-wrap", "-f", f"{build_dir}/app.fil", f"--output={build_dir}/messages_gettext.pot"]
+# note: do not use xgettext option "--sort-output", as that makes human translators have to context-switch all the time
+cmd = ["xgettext", "--from-code", "UTF-8", "--language", "Python", "--no-wrap", "-f", f"{build_dir}/app.fil", f"--output={build_dir}/messages_gettext.pot"]
subprocess.check_output(cmd)
# add QML translations
Why this scored 15/100
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