pomigrate2(1)

💖 pomigrate2 — the manual, but make it cute 💖

okay so bestie, this is pomigrate2(1) from the Translate Toolkit 1.3.0 era. yes she's an elder but she still ATE. let's get into it 🫶

✨ NAME ✨

pomigrate2 — migrates PO files from an old version using new POT files. that's the whole job. iconic. 💅

🌸 SYNOPSIS 🌸

pomigrate [options] from to new-templates

so like, quick vocab check, because the args are giving main character energy:

• from — a directory of existing PO files (your old stuff, the before pic 📸)
• to — the directory where the migrated PO files will be stored (the glow-up destination ✨)
• new-templates — the directory that contains the PO Template files (the blueprint, the vision board 🎀)

🦋 DESCRIPTION 🦋

so pomigrate2 is literally built to move an existing translation onto a new version based on updated PO Template files — automatically, without user intervention. no hand-holding, no babysitting, she just goes 💅

which means she's ideal for when you're migrating a whole pile of languages at once, or when you're migrating between related-but-divergent products — like, the example it gives is Mozilla to Firefox. cousins. sisters even. but not the same girl. 🧚

💖 OPTIONS 💖

• -F, --use-fuzzy-matching — uses fuzzy algorithms when merging to attempt to match strings. she's guessing, but make it algorithmically ✨
• -C, --use-compendium — creates and uses a compendium built from the migrating files. homegrown, farm-to-table 🍓
• -C, --use-compendium=some-compendium.po — uses an external compendium during the migration. bringing your own snack to the party 💜
• --no-wrap — do not wrap long lines. let them be long. let them breathe. 💀
• --locale — sets the locale for newly born files 👶🌸
• -q, --quiet — suppresses most output. she's not gonna yap. 🤫
• -p, --pot2po — uses pot2po(1) instead of msgmerge(1) to migrate. > ⚠️ heads up bestie: you cannot use compendia with this one. pick a lane 💅

🌈 OPERATION 🌈

so here's the tea — pomigrate2 leans on the Gettext tools msgmerge or the Translate Toolkit's pot2po to do all its merging tasks. it doesn't do the heavy lifting herself, she delegates. queen behavior 👑

step one: she finds all the files with the same name and same location in the from directory as in the new-template directory, and copies those over to the to directory. matching names, matching spots, no drama. ✨

step two, and this is the part where she gets resourceful: if there's no file in the from directory to match one that the new-template directory needs, she'll msgcat(1) all the files in the from directory that have the same name, and copy them to the correct destination inside the to directory. 🫶

step three: and if all of that fails? msginit(1) is used to initialise any missing PO files. starting fresh, no shame in it, we all begin somewhere 🎀

lastly, all the files in <to> get merged using msgmerge(1) or pot2po(1). this is the process that updates the files to match the layout and messages in new-templates. 💅

and optionally — by using --use-compendium — a compendium of all the translations in from can be created, to be used in that final merge process. optional but lowkey delicious 🍓

💀 BUGS 💀

None known

not a single one. she's flawless, she's unbothered, she's never been wrong in her LIFE 😭👑

and that's the whole page, bestie!! 💜 this was pomigrate2(1) from Translate Toolkit 1.3.0 — go migrate something and slay ✨🦋🌸