No more changelogs on F-Droid

[ltguillaume]

Is the removal of changelogs on F-Droid by design? If so, what's the reason for it?

[tibbi]

ye, I moved the app metadata like app title, short and long description into separate Weblate components so that they can be kept up to date with the Google Play versions through fastlane, ensuring better translations there. Sadly I couldnt exclude changelogs there so with the old system the volunteering translators would keep translating the changelogs too unnecessarily, as they wouldnt be shown to anyone anymore. Too many strings could discourage new people from translating the important strings too.

[ltguillaume]

...and there's no way to extract the data for F-Droid? I know you did the split (and I'm just seeing the move failed for SMS Messenger, at least for Dutch), but I don't really understand why it would then be impossible to have the changelogs show up on F-Droid.

[tibbi]

because changelogs are a part of the app metadata, like the short description etc

[ltguillaume]

Sorry, but I have no clue what you mean. You're using fastlane, so what keeps you from adding the changelogs to fastlane/metadata/android/en-US/changelogs? Why would that have anything to do with how you set up Weblate? You still need to put the full_description.txt, short_description.txt, title.txt in there, which come from the metadata you moved, so what's different for the changelogs?

[tibbi]

weblate fetches everything inside fastlane folders, so the changelogs would be offered for translating too

[ltguillaume]

I saw changelogs in the Weblate *-metadata yesterday, so that wasn't on purpose?

I also don't see the problem: in Weblate you can add an explanation or a flag or whatever to indicate that translators don't have to translate the changelog. But if they do, great.

[tibbi]

changelogs would really discourage new translators as they increase the word counts

[ltguillaume]

I get that, and so you can state those don't need to be translated. There might finally be an option in Weblate to disable translation by now.

I'm just saying, I think it's better to instruct a few translators that changelogs don't need to be translated than to hold back some vital information about the changes in your apps from your end users.

[tibbi]

F-droid has a Changelogs section, so if someone wants to read it, it is really easy to find

[ltguillaume]

No one will open up a separate page every time an update has been released (which you do very often, for which I salute you), especially when they've grown accustomed to having the changelog for those apps inside F-Droid.

[ltguillaume]

For reference, other users: https://teddit.net/r/SimpleMobileTools/comments/vvt3r3/fastlane_changelogs_deleted/

@tibbi Weblate translations are closed?

Pull request failed: You have exceeded a secondary rate limit and have been temporarily blocked from content creation. Please retry your request again later.

[tibbi]

ye Ive been doing many things on weblate recently, crossed every limit. Had to update my plan aswell yesterday, seems like the "Your billing plan has exceeded its limits." warning is still there though. I contacted them already, they said that it should disappear soon.

[ltguillaume]

By the way, are the instructions to the likes of

If you do not want to do it, you can also go into your device Settings - Apps - Special app access - Media management apps and allow this app to manage media.

still accurate for your devices?

For my device (Android 11), this won't do. I need to follow one of the following paths to set the permission:

1. Long-press app's icon -> App info -> Permissions -> Files and media
2. Settings -> Apps and notifications -> Permission Manager -> Files and media -> This app

Then Allow access to media only (or Allow management of all files)

[tibbi]

Media Management app is available on Android 12 only, it is something other than casual media access

[ltguillaume]

Ah ok, thanks for explaining. Haven't check on an Android 12 device yet.

[tibbi]

that whole thing is a big mess that keeps changing with every OS version and there will be some new media file permission changes with Android 13 again...

[ltguillaume]

Could it be strategy in the same way web services reorganize their privacy settings all the time (and take the opportunity to reset them "for the users' convenience"). It's not exactly the same situation, though...

[tibbi]

things keep getting stricter and apps have always less and less access to the device storage etc which is not necessarily a bad thing, but it means that we have to keep removing features and keep getting bad reviews for it

[ltguillaume]

I'd like to revisit this for the following reasons:

• Weblate has an add-on called language_regex by which you can exclude translations from being presented to translators.
• It makes less sense to offer Play Store users changelogs (as those people just turn on auto-update and never get to see them anyway), instead of F-Droid users (who update manually, are generally much more conscious about what is happening on their device and are more interested in app development and keeping up with features and issues that are important to them).

[tibbi]

I dont see such an addon, how can I enable it?

[ltguillaume]

Sorry I misunderstood the sentence about it in the FAQ. It's not a separate add-on, but part of the configuration of weblate.discovery.discovery. See https://docs.weblate.org/en/latest/admin/addons.html

[tibbi]

right, I see. Do you know what exactly should be filled out there to make it work well?

[ltguillaume]

I think the following is the best way to go:

https://docs.weblate.org/en/latest/formats.html

In case you don’t want to translate certain strings (for example changelogs), mark them read-only (see Customizing behavior using flags). This can be automated by the Bulk edit.

https://docs.weblate.org/en/latest/admin/addons.html#id2

Marking all changelog strings read-only

Search query	language:en AND key:changelogs/
Translation flags to add	read-only

[tibbi]

oh gosh, they really arent making it easy. Anyway, Ill take a look at it before updating some app, thanks.

[ltguillaume]

After Chocolatey, the Weblate documentation must be the most confusing and incomplete I've ever seen. What a mess...

[tibbi]

guess I managed fixing it automatically by adding the "language:en AND key:changelogs/" bulk edit rule for adding read-only flag (note to myself), will see soon if it works

[ltguillaume]

Cool, looking forward to it!

[ltguillaume]

Today, I saw changelogs for Simple Tank You and Simple Contacts on F-Droid! The latest update for Simple Galery and Simple Contacts were built on the same day (October 9), but they didn't have a changelog yet. Perhaps the next build.

[tibbi]

contacts has it at https://f-droid.org/packages/com.simplemobiletools.contacts.pro/ , added it wrong to the gallery. Future releases will have it though unless I forget adding them. All apps have been updated recently, so they will have it.

[ltguillaume]

Thank you so much! 😃