Skip to content

Add --purge flag to control removal of obsolete translations and comments in update-po#460

Draft
Copilot wants to merge 14 commits intomainfrom
copilot/fix-1570774-111592377-5ffacbc1-5e8a-4e4c-b0c9-3ffb5c94276f
Draft

Add --purge flag to control removal of obsolete translations and comments in update-po#460
Copilot wants to merge 14 commits intomainfrom
copilot/fix-1570774-111592377-5ffacbc1-5e8a-4e4c-b0c9-3ffb5c94276f

Conversation

Copy link
Contributor

Copilot AI commented Nov 3, 2025 •
edited
Loading

Fixed test failure by addressing two issues:

  1. Preserve obsolete translations in reordered output: The reorder_translations method was only including translations that exist in the POT file, which caused obsolete/disabled translations to be lost even when --no-purge was used. Now it adds any remaining translations from the PO file that aren't in the POT (including obsolete ones) after the POT-ordered translations.

  2. Count file-level comment restoration as a change: When --no-purge is used and file-level comments are being restored, the file should be counted as "updated" rather than "unchanged" since we're taking explicit action to preserve content.

These changes ensure that:

  • With --no-purge: obsolete translations and file-level comments are preserved, and files are reported as "Updated"
  • With default behavior (purging): obsolete translations and file-level comments are removed as before

The failing test now passes.

Original prompt

This section details on the original issue you should resolve

<issue_title>update-po: Preserve unused translations/comments?</issue_title>
<issue_description>## Feature Request

Describe your use case and the problem you are facing
update-po doesn't preserve unused translations/comments inside the PO files.
As Gettext editors like POEdit use their own translation database and VCS are usually used, this isn't a big deal and may de-clutter the PO file. - But an option for keeping this extra stuff may still be helpful in some cases.

Describe the solution you'd like
An option that lets update-po keep the unused translations/comments inside the PO files.

Example:
Input PO:

# Copyright (C) 2022 ACME
# This file is distributed under the proprietary.
msgid ""
msgstr ""
"Project-Id-Version: Test Theme 1.0.0\n"
[...]

#: theme.json
msgctxt "Color name"
msgid "Yellow"
msgstr "Gelb"

#~ msgctxt "Font size name"
#~ msgid "Small"
#~ msgstr "Klein"

Output PO (as you can see the extra Copyright comment and the unused translation were both stripped):

msgid ""
msgstr ""
"Project-Id-Version: Test Theme 1.0.0\n"
[...]

#: theme.json
msgctxt "Color name"
msgid "Yellow"
msgstr "Gelb"
````</issue_description>

## Comments on the Issue (you are @copilot in this section)

<comments>
<comment_new><author>@swissspidy</author><body>
Thanks for sharing this suggestion 👍 

I'm not sure if [the gettext library we use](https://github.com/php-gettext/Gettext/tree/4.x) supports that, but at first glance it looks like it at least does extract `#` and `#~` comments:

https://github.com/php-gettext/Gettext/blob/3e7460f8d9c90174824e3f39240bd578bb3d376a/src/Extractors/Po.php#L47-L59

Then the question is whether these can be kept during the update/merge.</body></comment_new>
</comments>

💡 You can make Copilot smarter by setting up custom instructions, customizing its development environment and configuring Model Context Protocol (MCP) servers. Learn more Copilot coding agent tips in the docs.

Copilot AI and others added 3 commits November 3, 2025 14:08
@swissspidy
Add --skip-purge flag to preserve obsolete entries and comments
9e2589b 
Co-authored-by: swissspidy <841956+swissspidy@users.noreply.github.com>
@swissspidy
Add test scenarios for --skip-purge flag
af41370 
Co-authored-by: swissspidy <841956+swissspidy@users.noreply.github.com>
@swissspidy
Fix code review issues: remove trailing whitespace and use atomic fil…
7651405 
…e operations

Co-authored-by: swissspidy <841956+swissspidy@users.noreply.github.com>
Copilot AI changed the title [WIP] update-po: Preserve unused translations/comments? Add --skip-purge flag to preserve obsolete translations and comments in update-po Nov 3, 2025
Copilot AI requested a review from swissspidy November 3, 2025 14:17
@codecov
Copy link

codecov bot commented Nov 3, 2025 •
edited
Loading

Codecov Report

❌ Patch coverage is 86.04651% with 6 lines in your changes missing coverage. Please review.

Files with missing lines Patch % Lines
src/UpdatePoCommand.php 86.04% 6 Missing ⚠️

📢 Thoughts on this report? Let us know!

@swissspidy

This comment was marked as resolved.

Sign in to view
@swissspidy
Rename flag from --skip-purge to --purge with inverted logic
86fabf4 
Co-authored-by: swissspidy <841956+swissspidy@users.noreply.github.com>

This comment was marked as resolved.

Sign in to view
Copilot AI changed the title Add --skip-purge flag to preserve obsolete translations and comments in update-po Add --purge flag to control removal of obsolete translations and comments in update-po Nov 3, 2025
@swissspidy

This comment was marked as resolved.

Sign in to view
@swissspidy
Fix test failure: preserve obsolete translations and count file-level…
195b8e6 
… comment restoration as change

Co-authored-by: swissspidy <841956+swissspidy@users.noreply.github.com>

This comment was marked as resolved.

Sign in to view
@swissspidy swissspidy requested a review from Copilot February 16, 2026 20:59

This comment was marked as resolved.

Sign in to view

swissspidy and others added 2 commits February 16, 2026 22:05
@swissspidy
Update src/UpdatePoCommand.php
229cec2 
Co-authored-by: Copilot <175728472+Copilot@users.noreply.github.com>
@swissspidy
Update src/UpdatePoCommand.php
1428a7d 
Co-authored-by: Copilot <175728472+Copilot@users.noreply.github.com>
swissspidy
swissspidy reviewed Feb 16, 2026
View reviewed changes
@swissspidy
Update src/UpdatePoCommand.php
63fa08a 
Co-authored-by: Copilot <175728472+Copilot@users.noreply.github.com>
swissspidy
swissspidy reviewed Feb 16, 2026
View reviewed changes
Sign up for free to join this conversation on GitHub. Already have an account? Sign in to comment

Reviewers

@swissspidy swissspidy swissspidy left review comments

Copilot code review Copilot Copilot left review comments

At least 1 approving review is required to merge this pull request.

Assignees

@swissspidy swissspidy

Copilot code review Copilot

Labels

command:i18n-update-po scope:testing

Projects

None yet

Milestone

No milestone

Development

Successfully merging this pull request may close these issues.

update-po: Preserve unused translations/comments?

2 participants

@swissspidy