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HowToAddANewLanguage.md

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Adding a new language to the Github infrastructure

Languages reside within the GiellaLT organisation, and new languages should be added there.

Prerequisites

⚠️ You need to use gut to be able to add a new language the way it is intended.

⚠️ You also need to be at least admin to set up a new repository properly.

How to add a new language

gut template generate -t template-lang-und -d lang-XXX

Replace XXX with the code of the language you want. lang-XXX is really only the name of the new directory/repo, but the name of the repo should follow this pattern. The command is similar for keyboards, just with a different template.

The command will prompt you for the essential data, as follows:

__UND__: 3-letter ISO code, e.g. pma.
__UND2C__: 2-letter ISO code if it exists, 3-letter otherwise
__UNDEFINED__: Language name in English
__LICENSE__: License type, e.g. `LGPLv3`
__REPO__: language repository name, e.g. lang-pma

This command can also be used to superimpose the GiellaLT dir and file structure on an existing repo, e.g. when importing an LT project into the GiellaLT infrastructure. Presently the command will fail, although the new structure has been added, so one can ignore the error, and proceed to verify and add&commit the changes.

Then do a few preparatory steps:

cd lang-XXX/
chmod a+x autogen.sh ## make autogen.sh executable
git commit autogen.sh -m "Make autogen.sh executable"
cd ..

When the dir is created, and the content is checked, add it to the GiellaLT GitHub organisation as follows:

gut create repo -d . -o giellalt -r lang-XXX -p

Notes:

  • Use option --clone if the language repo is created in another dir than the existing language repositories.
  • Use option -u/--use-https to use the https protocol instead of ssh
  • skip the -p/--public option if you want the repo to be private

The -d option should point to the parent dir of the target — it makes it possible to add multiple language repos at a time, assuming they are all located within the same parent directory. The --clone option makes sure that the new repo/s is/are directly cloned and made part of the local GiellaLT repos. The regex is presently required, but will probably be made optional.

Aftermath

After moving/pushing the new repo, remember to:

  • do a git pull -u origin main if your setup doesn't automate this
  • add webhook for Zulip
    To make sure that GitHub activities are logged in Zulip. Copy the webhook data from another existing repo, and just change the channel parameter (you need to create the channel in Zulip first if it does not already exist; channel name should be the ISO 639-3 code for the language; setting up a new Zulip channel requires admin rights)
  • set a description — manually using the GitHub web interface, or using gut (see higher up on this page)
  • set a website — same as previous
  • add topics. See other languages for examples. Remember to add maturity classification, language family and geographic location.
  • check write access, team association etc
  • turn on GitHub pages in a two-step process:
    • select the branch main, and use the /docs directory as the source. Let the documentation build run at least once (ie push some change to GitHub). This will create the branch gh_pages.
    • now select the newly created branch gh_pages, with / (root) as the source. Done!
  • to make CI & CD work for keyboards and spellers (a.o. to get them into Divvun Manager):
    • follow these instructions to add the new packages in Páhkat to get them to upload to the Páhkat repo, and thus make them available in Divvun Manager via the nightly channel
    • ask the DevOps person to restart the divvun-web droplet (was: add a config for the new languages (run some of this to make TaskCluster pick up some secrets etc for the new languages))
    • for lang-XXX repos, edit manifest.toml.in:
      • add a proper product ID (ie a UUID string, using e.g. uuidgen or similar)
      • run ./autogen.sh && configure, and commit the changes in manifest.toml
    • for keyboard-XXX repos:
      • add a proper UUID string in XXX.kbdgen/targets/win.yaml (use uuidgen or similar)

Result

The above steps will create a new directory for the specified language, and populate it with the required makefiles, autoconf files and template source files.

To start doing real work, you must do one set of preparations still:

cd lang-LANGCODE
./autogen.sh
./configure

Now you can start editing the source files, and whenever you want to make sure everything compiles, run make. Run make check to ensure that all defined tests are passed. Remember to update the test suits as you enhance the linguistic model!