This paragraph describes the master file process. It is included in the chapter aimed at package maintainers, because it appeared important that Debian Installer package maintainers understand the way translations are handled.
All PO files from packages listed in
packages/po/packages_list are merged into five po files
per language and translators just work on these files. These
so-called master PO files are kept in
packages/po/sublevelX in the Debian Installer main directory.
These files are the only files edited by translators. All other PO files as well as PO "templates" files (POT files) are automatically generated by the synchronization script (see Section 6.5, “Translation synchronisation”):
merge all templates.pot files into
packages/po/template.pot (included are all
debian/po/templates.pot files for
packages listed in packages/po/packages_list);
update packages/po/sublevelX/*.po files according to
this template.pot file;
update all individual packages
debian/po/*.po files with the translations
from these single packages/po/sublevelX/*.po files.
As a consequence of this process, changes made directly to
debian/po/*.po files are
lost in this process. So, if for some reason,
maintainers need to update these files (there is normally
no reason for this), they should consider
modifying the source files in packages/po/sublevelX/.
It is however highly recommended that such changes are discussed with Debian Installer i18n coordinators (or handed over to them).