[Libreoffice] Why the heck was help ripped out of the linux langpacks? (and that *between RCs*)

[Fridrich Strba]

On Thu, 2011-01-13 at 16:37 +0100, Christian Lohmaier wrote: 
> A drastic change once again just between release candidates, without
> prior announcement, without notifiying website, etc.
> (if there was an annoucnement, then I apologize, but would be thankful
> if you could point me to it, I'm definitely surprised (in a bad way)
> of this change, as are other people noticing it now).

OK, I have to plead guilty the lack of information. I was just happy
that I could upload, because when I am uploading, it takes about 1 day
of flaky connectivity in my house :(

> I don't think this change makes sense at all, it just puts more burden
> on non-english speakers, and on documentation and website maintainers
> and on the user. Instead of two downloads, one now has to deal with
> three.

The problem was actually the RC2. Since we finalized the helppack
production for Windows and Linux for RC2, I have built langpacks and
helppacks for RC2 already. Just that because of a faulty default, the
langpacks contained the help which was also dupplicated in helppacks. My
virtual machines run out of space and the builds broke in packaging of
helppacks.

I had several options: 1) reconfigure and rebuild scp2 and redo the
packaging, which would take something about 8 hours on my different
builds. Which would slip the upload by a day and we would not hit the
mirrors before Xmas. 2) Forget about helppacks and upload the language
packs including the *-help rpm/deb. I chose that option.

The help is more then half of a language pack. Web help works from Linux
builds too. So, it is now possible for someone who does not want the
help to download only the ui localizations for his language and use the
online help if need arises.

> I understand the need for helppacks on windows (as without them there
> wouldn't be help at all)  ( - but then again I totally dislike the
> multi-installer approach in the first place, but be it).

De gustibus....

> If it makes so much sense in your eyes, then why are there no
> helppacks for the Mac?

Yeah, we would love to have them on mac too, just that it needs some
more work because the DMG packaging uses some magic DS_Store files and
we did not yet have the time to look towards how to manipulate/create
them :(

I hope it answers your questions and calms you a bit :)

Cheers

Fridrich "The Sinner" Strba