Open Stack

On Tue, Jan 28, 2014 at 8:47 PM, Ben Nemec <openstack at nemebean.com> wrote:

>  On 2014-01-27 11:42, Doug Hellmann wrote:
>
>  We have a blueprint open for separating translated log messages into
> different domains so the translation team can prioritize them differently
> (focusing on errors and warnings before debug messages, for example) [1].
> Some concerns were raised related to the review [2], and I would like to
> address those in this thread and see if we can reach consensus about how to
> proceed.
>
> The implementation in [2] provides a set of new marker functions similar
> to _(), one for each log level (we have _LE, LW, _LI, _LD, etc.). These
> would be used in conjunction with _(), and reserved for log messages.
> Exceptions, API messages, and other user-facing messages all would still be
> marked for translation with _() and would (I assume) receive the highest
> priority work from the translation team.
>
> When the string extraction CI job is updated, we will have one "main"
> catalog for each app or library, and additional catalogs for the log
> levels. Those show up in transifex separately, but will be named in a way
> that they are obviously related. Each translation team will be able to
> decide, based on the requirements of their users, how to set priorities for
> translating the different catalogs.
>
> Existing strings being sent to the log and marked with _() will be removed
> from the main catalog and moved to the appropriate log-level-specific
> catalog when their marker function is changed. My understanding is that
> transifex is smart enough to recognize the same string from more than one
> source, and to suggest previous translations when it sees the same text.
> This should make it easier for the translation teams to "catch up" by
> reusing the translations they have already done, in the new catalogs.
>
> One concern that was raised was the need to mark all of the log messages
> by hand. I investigated using extraction patterns like "LOG.debug(" and
> "LOG.info(", but because of the way the translation actually works
> internally we cannot do that. There are a few related reasons.
>
> In other applications, the function _() translates a string at the point
> where it is invoked, and returns a new string object. OpenStack has a
> requirement that messages be translated multiple times, whether in the API
> or the LOG (there is already support for logging in more than one language,
> to different log files). This requirement means we delay the translation
> operation until right before the string is output, at which time we know
> the target language. We could update the log functions to create Message
> objects dynamically, except...
>
> Each app or library that uses the translation code will need its own
> "domain" for the message catalogs. We get around that right now by not
> translating many messages from the libraries, but that's obviously not what
> we want long term (we at least want exceptions translated). If we had a
> special version of a logger in oslo.log that knew how to create Message
> objects for the format strings used in logging (the first argument to
> LOG.debug for example), it would also have to know what translation domain
> to use so the proper catalog could be loaded. The wrapper functions defined
> in the patch [2] include this information, and can be updated to be
> application or library specific when oslo.log eventually becomes its own
> library.
>
> Further, as part of moving the logging code from oslo-incubator to
> oslo.log, and making our logging something we can use from other OpenStack
> libraries, we are trying to change the implementation of the logging code
> so it is no longer necessary to create loggers with our special wrapper
> function. That would mean that oslo.log will be a library for *configuring*
> logging, but the actual log calls can be handled with Python's standard
> library, eliminating a dependency between new libraries and oslo.log. (This
> is a longer, and separate, discussion, but I mention it here as backround.
> We don't want to change the API of the logger in oslo.log because we don't
> want to be using it directly in the first place.)
>
> Another concern raised was the use of a prefix _L for these functions,
> since it ties the priority definitions to "logs." I chose that prefix as an
> explicit indicate that these *are* just for logs. I am not associating any
> actual priority with them. The translators want us to move the log messages
> out of the main catalog. Having them all in separate catalogs is a
> refinement that gives them what they want -- some translators don't care
> about log messages at all, some only care about errors, etc. We decided
> that the translators should set priorities, and we would make that possible
> by separating the catalogs into logical groups. Everything marked with _()
> will still go into the main catalog, but beyond that it isn't up to the
> developers to indicate "priority" for translations.
>
> The alternative approach of using babel translator comments would, under
> other circumstances, help because each message could have some indication
> of its relative importance. However, it does not meet the requirement that
> the translators (and not the developers) set those priorities. It also
> doesn't help the translators because the main catalog does not shrink to
> hold only the user-facing messages. So the comments might be useful in
> addition to this proposed change, but they doesn't solve the original
> problem.
>
> If we all agree on the approach, I think the patches already in progress
> should be pretty easy to land in the incubator. The next step is to update
> the CI jobs that extract the messages and interact with transifex. After
> that, changes to the applications and existing libraries are likely to take
> longer, and could be done in batches. They may not happen until the next
> cycle, but I would like to have the infrastructure in place by the end of
> this one.
>
> Feedback?
>
> Doug
>
> [1]
> https://blueprints.launchpad.net/oslo/+spec/log-messages-translation-domain
> [2] https://review.openstack.org/#/c/65518/
>
> I guess my thoughts are still largely the same as on the original review.
> This is already going to be an additional burden on developers and
> reviewers (who love i18n so much already ;-) and ideally I'd prefer that we
> be a little less granular with our designations.  Something like _IMPORTANT
> and _OPTIONAL instead of separate translation domains for each individual
> log level.  Maybe that can't get the translation load down to a manageable
> level though.  I'm kind of guessing on that point.
>

We did consider something like that at the summit, IIRC. However, we
wanted to leave the job of setting the priority for doing the translation
up to the translators, rather than the developers, because the priorities
vary by language. Using designators that match the log output level lowers
the review burden, because you don't have to think about the importance of
translation, only whether or not the translator tag matches the log
function.

>
> For reference, I grepped the nova source to see how many times we're
> logging at each of the different levels.  It's a very rough estimate since
> I'm sure I'm missing some things and there are almost certainly some dupes,
> but I would expect it to be relatively close to reality.  Here were the
> results:
>
> [fedora at openstack nova]$ grep -ri log.error | wc -l
> 190
> [fedora at openstack nova]$ grep -ri log.warn | wc -l
> 286
> [fedora at openstack nova]$ grep -ri log.info | wc -l
> 254
> [fedora at openstack nova]$ grep -ri log.debug | wc -l
> 849
>
> It seems like debug is the low-hanging fruit here - getting rid of that
> eliminates more translations than the rest of the log levels combined
> (since it looks like Nova is translating the vast majority of their debug
> messages).  I don't know if that's helpful (enough) though.
>
I'm not sure either. Daisy, would it solve your team's needs if we just
removed translation markers from debug log messages and left everything in
the same catalog? It's not what we talked about at the summit, but maybe
it's an alternative?

>
> I suppose my biggest concern is getting reviewers to buy in to whatever we
> do.  It's going to be some additional workload for them since we likely
> can't enforce this through a hacking rule, and some people basically refuse
> to touch anything to do with translation as it is.  It's also one more
> hurdle for new contributors since it's a non-standard way of handling
> translation.  And, as I noted on the review, it's almost certainly going to
> get out of sync over time as people adjust log message priorities and
> such.  Maybe those are all issues we just have to accept, but they are
> issues.
>
I expect we'll need to set some project-wide standards, as Sean is doing
with the meanings of the various log levels.

>
> Oh, one other thing I wanted to ask about was what the status of Transifex
> is as far as OpenStack is concerned.  My understanding was that we were
> looking for alternatives because Transifex had pretty much abandoned their
> open source version.  Does that have any impact on this?
>
If we replace it, we will replace it with another tool. The file formats
are standardized, so I wouldn't expect a tool change at that level to
affect our decision on this question.

Doug

>
> Anyway, it's getting late and my driveway won't shovel itself, so those
> are my slightly rambling thoughts on this. :-)
>
> -Ben
>
>
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