Regular translation update

[msujew]

I want to use this issue to have discussions on how to perform regular updates to our translation files.

Proposal

My current idea is to use the CI to create a commit on a separate branch for every commit to master. This branch is always rebased to the latest master and runs the theia nls-extract and theia nls-localize commands to produce updated localization files. These can be merged/cherry-picked into the release-branch and will be then available for every release.

[vince-fugnitto]

I think the idea to have an automated workflow to perform a bulk translation update prior to the release would be the best way forward, cherry-picking a commit isn't the end of the world :) We can also ensure that there is no missing delta between translations if a commit was added afterwards that introduces new localizations.

The issue with having to do it on each pull-request is the fact that the devs would need an API-key to the external service that does the translations, and would likely push new contributors away from the project.

[msujew]

@vince-fugnitto regarding API-keys: I would simply store my API-key as a secret in the GitHub repo, which is then used on every GitHub actions workflow. So, from that perspective, it doesn't matter whether it's on a per-PR or per-release basis, since they use the stored API-key anyway. Contributors to Theia shouldn't have to touch that anyway.

[vince-fugnitto]

@msujew since we have the free API afaik and we were to do the per pr-basis we might need to check that we do not hit the limit for the month. I assume we should only translate the delta and not the whole codebase again?

[msujew]

@vince-fugnitto the command always works on a delta, since I anticipated this ;)

[vince-fugnitto]

@msujew I meant to ask you about this item, since we might add new translations during the month (new commands or add missing translations), should we perform a translation before the release (ex: the one scheduled this Thursday)?

[msujew]

@vince-fugnitto Yeah, I will create a PR for this. Didn't have time to take care of this issue (i.e. automatic updates) yet.