Had some time today during lunch to work on the Transifex Appliance and decided to play with the newly added feature of supporting subversion over https. So I launched thedevel EC2 instance on Amazon Web Service and proceeded to add PCMan File Manager so that I could translate it online. Before you ask, yes: I do have commit access to the project and could have checked out the code locally and done the work as I usually do, but that’s not fun! Besides, being the good citizen that I am, I felt like testing this new feature (remember: this is only available on tip!) and providing some feedback.

After updating my appliance to run the latest code, I took a stab at trying to add PCManFM as a project and see if I could then work on trunk code. To make a long story short, the code did not play well with subversion repositories with invalid ssl certificates, and it fell flat on its face. A quick look at the Transifex log files via the appliance’s administrative interface, I was able to ping diegobz on #transifex and with a very subtle crack of a whip got him to look into the problem.

We then proceeded to test and validate some of the changes he made on the spot, and once we got it right, I updated the appliance to use the new code. From then on, it was a matter of creating the project:

Add the proper information to pull code from trunk (I set the Root attribute to `https://pcmanfm.svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/pcmanfm/trunk/ <https://pcmanfm.svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/pcmanfm/trunk/>`__ by the way):

Configure it for submission directly to the upstream project (I could also have chosen to send it as a patch via email to the mantainer):

And start working on my translations using the handy dandy Lotte editor:

A few minutes later I was submitting away my translation and getting it committed automatically to the upstream project! This is how translations should be done by the way: working directly with the upstream project. :)

The only time I had to ssh into the appliance and do manual configuration changes was when I entered my subversion credentials for SourceForge (that’s where PCManFM’s code is hosted) into the /usr/share/transifex/settings/80-vcs-extras.conf file. I added the following line and restarted the apache server:

SVN_CREDENTIALS = {‘sourceforge.net’: ('MY_SF_USER_NAME', ‘MY_PASSWORD')}

Yeah, I shouldn’t have to ssh into the appliance but I have bugged the Transifex guys about this and am trying to convince them to make this part of the project configuration process… It’s only a matter of time ‘til they crack! :)

Anyhow, there’s some pretty cool new features scheduled to come out with the next release, like granular commit access…

… so, if you want to play with the latest Transifex code, make sure to download the Transifex Appliance Devel images and always keep it up to date using the web based administrative interface. If you’ve never used it, just point your browser to the appliance’s IP address but make sure to use https and add port 8003! For instance, https://ec2-75-101-171-187.compute-1.amazonaws.com:8003 *

• don’t bother trying this url for it will be shutdown soon :)

As always, feel free to ask me anything related to the appliance, and file issues and/or send your thank-you notes to the Transifex guys! :)