Adding a new locale to Beta and Release builds
Prerequisites
The majority of the technical work has already been completed when setting up Nightly builds.
There are a few important prerequisites before adding a new locale to Beta and Release.
For the localization community:
- Localization should have reached a high level of completion, especially for user facing parts of the UI:
- All Tags with high priority (4 and 5 stars) should be at 100% (or very close).
- Lower priority Tags should be at least above 30%.
- Localization team has demonstrated a consistent effort, being able to keep up for at least a couple of cycles with the incoming flow of new strings.
- There must be more than one active translator on the project, to ensure that the content has been peer reviewed.
- There is a relevant number of users on the Nightly channel testing the localization. This number varies based on the language, for minority languages 10-20 users is an excellent result. Also, a trend showing growth is important as well.
For the localization PM:
- Builds have been tested on different operating systems without identifying critical issues.
- Searchplugins are set up.
To track this work, you need to file a bug in Firefox::Build Config (like this example), blocking the original tracking bug for the locale (fx-l10n-LOCALE
).
Verify language name
First of all, make sure that MOZ_LANG_TITLE
in toolkit/defines.inc
has the correct value, since it’s used to set up the language pack on AMO.
The language name associated to the locale code is displayed in a few places in Firefox interface (language settings for web content, contextual menu for dictionaries). The language name needs to be defined in:
- languageNames.ftl: ID with structure
language-name-LOCALECODE = (name of the language in English)
. Note that the locale code can only be a 2/3 letter code, locales likeca-valencia
are not valid. - mozIntl.jsm:
- Add the locale code in the
availableLocaleDisplayNames
constant,language
set. - Add the localized language name in the
nativeLocaleNames
map. The localized language name should also be stored in this repository.
- Add the locale code in the
- language.properties: add a value in the form
LOCALECODE.accept = true
. This is needed to list the language in the language settings dialog for web content.
Add locale to build configuration
First of all make sure that your environment is correctly set up, update your local mozilla-unified clone and make sure it’s on the central
bookmark:
$ cd ~/mozilla/mercurial/mozilla-unified
$ hg pull -u
$ hg up central
The file to modify is in browser/locales/shipped-locales
, open it with your text editor of choice.
$ atom browser/locales/shipped-locales
And add the new locale to the list. With Atom and the Sort Lines package installed, you can press F5
to make sure that the list is in alphabetical order.
After you’ve finished editing the file, check the status of the repository, and the diff. Let’s consider for example the task of adding Urdu (ur).
$ hg status
M browser/locales/shipped-locales
$ hg diff
--- a/browser/locales/shipped-locales
+++ b/browser/locales/shipped-locales
@@ -83,14 +84,13 @@ son
te
th
tr
uk
+ur
uz
vi
xh
zh-CN
M
in hg status
indicates that the file has been modified, +
in hg diff
that the line has been added. Follow the instructions available in this document to create a patch, submit it for review, and land it.
You also need to set the relnote-firefox
flag to ?
in the bug, the suggested comment is Suggested for release notes: "Locale added: LANGUAGE_NAME (LOCALE_CODE)"
.
Update language pack settings on AMO
The language pack for the new locale will be uploaded automatically by release automation on addons.mozilla.org (starting with the Beta version). A few follow-up manual steps are needed:
- The
Mozilla
account needs to be added as author for the language pack. - The
target_locale
field needs to be set for the language pack (via Django admin UI). - The locale needs to be defined in this JavaScript file.
For the first two steps, an email needs to be sent to AMO administrators (amo-admins(at)mozilla.com).
These steps will make the language pack available in both the Language Tools page and the API used by Firefox to add new languages from preferences.