“source changes” are not visible anymore

[jfaltenbacher]

Describe the issue

With the current view, our linguists can't tell which parts have been updated in “Strings marked for edit”, therefore they need to go through every word in each string to figure out what has changed.

This currently occurs for all the projects mentioned at 'Additional context'. But looking at older projects, where the updated string parts were marked before, now do also not highlight the changes (for example see https://l10n.opensuse.org/translate/uyuni/java-database-4-3/ja/?q=state%3Atranslated&offset=7)

We checked https://docs.weblate.org/en/latest/formats/gettext.html#showing-source-string-change
In the previoues projects we have used:
MSGMERGE = ${BIN}/intltool-update -x --gettext-package=$(PACKAGE) --dist

I already tried

• I've read and searched the documentation.
• I've searched for similar filed issues in this repository.

Steps to reproduce the behavior

Go to one of the projects mentioned at 'Additional info', for example: https://l10n.opensuse.org/projects/uyuni/uyuni-tools-mgradm/ja/
Select 'Strings marked for editing'
Most strings do already have a translation, as shown when enabling 'History' but the changes are not shown in the upper editor.

Expected behavior

Expected, older view

Screenshots

Current view

Exception traceback

No response

How do you run Weblate?

weblate.org service

Weblate versions

5.9.2

Weblate deploy checks

No response

Additional context

The affected components for this are as follows:
https://l10n.opensuse.org/projects/uyuni/java/
https://l10n.opensuse.org/projects/uyuni/java-jsp/
https://l10n.opensuse.org/projects/uyuni/uyuni-tools-mgradm/
https://l10n.opensuse.org/projects/uyuni/uyuni-tools-mgrctl/
https://l10n.opensuse.org/projects/uyuni/uyuni-tools-mgrpxy/
https://l10n.opensuse.org/projects/uyuni/uyuni-tools-shared/
https://l10n.opensuse.org/projects/uyuni/web/

[nijel]

Just for the reference, this is the string: https://l10n.opensuse.org/translate/uyuni/uyuni-tools-mgradm/ko/?checksum=722eec7b8863be19#history

This is the corresponding section in te PO file:

https://github.com/uyuni-project/uyuni-tools/blob/82ef2182cf8b4200f996e2812932bb3aa3a6f319/locale/mgradm/ko.po#L403-L406

As you can see it doesn't contain the previous string, thus Weblate cannot show the diff. The msgmerge needs to be invoked with --previous to include it.

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[mcalmer]

As you can see it doesn't contain the previous string, thus Weblate cannot show the diff. The msgmerge needs to be invoked with --previous to include it.

We never used msgmerge directly and intltool-update never called it with such an option. According to Julia it was working before without it.
Any idea what has changed?

Currently it means everybody has to change from intltool-update to msgmerge

[nijel]

There was no change in Weblate in this for years.

For bilingual files (such as gettext PO), Weblate needs this information to be present in the translation file, as there is no other way to figure out that string was renamed and not added.

For monolingual files, Weblate can track this because strings have unique identifier and the source string is just one of the translations.

[nijel]

PS: Moving away from intltool might be a reasonable thing to do anyway, see https://wiki.gnome.org/MigratingFromIntltoolToGettext.