• A little on the l10n beta 1 roll call…

    October 1st, 2008 by seth bindernagel with 4 comments »

    Last night was the code freeze for Firefox 3.1’s first beta.  The l10n-drivers team posted the call for participation and watched locales roll in one-by-one all the way up to the 11:59 PM deadline (Mountain View, CA time).

    Have you ever been a part of one of these releases?  Here’s a bit of how it works…

    On September 10, Axel made the first call for participation in localizing FF 3.1 Beta 1.  Time went by as our localizers prepared their localizations, dealing with new complexities like migrating all their prior efforts to the new code repository, translating newly added strings, and learning how to use Hg.  We answered questions along the way and helped when prompted.

    On September 29, Axel made another announcement about Firefox 3.1, this time calling for our teams to “opt-in” to the official release process for the first beta.  We were down to a few days left and people needed to start sending us their work.

    By looking at the L10n dashboard (click on “Fx31x” in the Tree section, and the “35″ in the Result section), we were able to see the locales that were closest to finishing up, but hadn’t quite gotten into the process.  Stas and I started emailing teams directly who were close.  We compiled the teams who had unbroken, green localized builds of Firefox, but who had yet to opt-in to the release process.  Then, we gathered all those who had broken, red builds because they had missing strings.  I emailed each team with updates and asked them to opt-in if possible.

    At this point, we started to see the locales roll in.  One can’t help but feel a bit of pride and a little thrill as our localizers stand up to the challenge.  The l10n-drivers sit back and watch.

    Then, my mind starts to drift to a galaxy far, far away….

    I’m always reminded of this scene in Star Wars. (30 seconds in)

    In the clip, all wings report in…red 10, 7, 3, 6, 9, 2, 11, and 5…one-by-one with some excitement and pride.  As we approach code freeze, localizers will chime in much the same fashion.

    • “fr locale is opting in, patchset a7c003554f46″
    • “please add sk too, changeset f3fb0018a3b”
    • “hu locale is opting in, patchset 279d4db75211″
    • “es-AR opting-in, changeset e35e14d53ef0″
    • “ru locale is opting in, patchset a86d6547da37″

    and so on…

    And, just like the Jedi master Obie-wan, Axel will drop in a whisper with sage advice along the way…

    (best read with Obie-wan whisper)

    “…that build has missing strings…”

    “…if you get the changeset into my queue, you’re fine, but I wouldn’t fall over if I missed out on this…”

    “…you can land, and we’ll tag and release with the given changesets….”

    When code finally froze (like a tauntaun on the planet Hoth), we had 36 locales* participating!  I believe that’s the most we’ve had in the first beta of a new version of the Firefox browser.

    Congratulations to the localizers!  It’s truly an accomplishment that shows the commitment and dedication of our community.  I’m proud to be a part of it.

    * see the comment field…