Localization Process

Introduction

Localizations are very important for Openbravo ERP project and our community is doing a great effort creating and maintaining them and giving suggestions to enhance Openbravo ERP product to better suite the needs of different regions around the word.

This document describes the localization process for Openbravo ERP. It involves several collaboration tools and people and it's very important that you follow it carefully.

Basic localization process

1. Check in the Current localization projects wiki page that there is no effort for your country or region. If there is an on-going effort, write the person listed as a contact and try to collaborate with her. If the person is not answering to your mails, send a message to the message thread for that effort explaining the situation and request to lead a new effort.
2. If you are leading a new effort, you should follow these steps:
   1. Notify the localization coordinator at Openbravo of your effort sending an e-mail to Eduardo Argal <eduardo.argal AT openbravo.com>. Indicate also your schedule for your localization effort.
   2. A message thread for the localization effort should be created at the SourceForge Localization forum.
   3. It is very important as a leader for an effort that you monitor the traffic for the message thread created for your effort. You can do so using the Monitor this forum option in the SourceForge forums.
   4. Send the details of your effort (indicating the address of the project forum to coordinate and your contact details) to Eduardo Argal <eduardo.argal@openbravo.com>. He will register your effort in projects section of Current localization projects wiki page.
3. The translations and chart of accounts are stored in the Openbravo Subversion Server. There is a page explaining how to use Subversion and you can also browse the translations and accounting directories. You should request an SVN account to Eduardo Argal <eduardo.argal AT openbravo.com> to be able to publish your work in our Subversion server. It is important to follow the repository structure in Subversion directories.
4. Start the localization process.
   1. We request the localizers to upload their work to Subversion every two weeks in a pure open source approach, then people can follow your progress and give feedback to you.
   2. If you have any doubt or question, publish it in the forum created for your localization effort. Openbravo users and developers monitor that forum on a daily basis.
   3. If you think that your region has a functional or localization requirement that is not covered by Openbravo ERP, register it in our Localization Special Requirements page where we keep track of all of these.
5. A translation is considered complete when all the user interface is translated. A chart of accounts should pass test1 and test2 to be published. We also strongly recommend to pass also test 3.
6. Once your work is considered complete, a beta version can be published. Contact Eduardo Argal <eduardo.argal AT openbravo.com> to start this process. The process includes:
   1. Package the localization and make it available at Openbravo SourceForge accounts and translations download area for localizations.
   2. Prepare a note to announce it at SourceForge. See an example.
   3. Announce it in the localization forum.
7. Keep the new versions of Openbravo up to date and repeat the process again.

Complete localization

1. You should start by analyzing the most successful local solutions in your market. For example, for the US localization, a local solution such as Quickbook should be analyzed.
2. Based on this analysis, you should define a list of localization gaps, which are features that need to be implemented in Openbravo in order to be competitive with that local solution. Please notice that you should focus on local capabilities only for this analysis and not on additional geography independent functionality; this is to a large degree a subjective assessment but it is important that your localization efforts do not get sidetracked by other potential functional gaps.
3. Contact Openbravo localization team: collaborate AT openbravo.com
4. Collaborate: join efforts from country community members.
   1. A message thread for the localization effort should be created at the SourceForge Localization forum.
   2. It is very important as a leader for an effort that your monitor the traffic for the message thread created for your effort. You can do so using the Monitor this forum option in the SourceForge forums.
5. Openbravo team will create a branch in our subversion repository for the project following the naming conventions and will give you the rights to develop there.
6. Get a developer ID. Note: this is not needed starting with r2.50.
7. Get rights to access the new branch (user and password)
8. Write a functional and technical documentation for the project.
9. Do continuous merges from trunk to your branch to keep updated and avoid future problems.
10. Packaging:
    1. OB 2.40: Country OB version can be created from the branch.
    2. OB 2.50: A module for the specific country can be created from the branch.

Any particular development that makes sense to be included as part of the product core can be developed separately and contributed to the core. This means not taking care of that code any more. Openbravo team will help you doing the functional and technical specification but also will take care of that piece of code for future versions compatibility. See contributor guide.

Branching policy

New branches are created for particular developments when needed for a localization and also when contributing code to the core. Openbravo ERP follows particular naming conventions to easily identify the purpose of those branches:

• Localization branches: loc-CountryName (ex. loc-italy)
• Core contribution branches: core-Contributor (ex. core-bmomentum)

A localization branch can easily be updated from trunk doing a merge. We encourage localizers to do continuous merges from trunk to their branches so that changes can be easily applied.

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When our model has both localization and core contribution, two branches are created as follows:

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This way core contributions can easily merged back to the trunk once it has been tested but also can be easily merged to localization branch.

If you have any doubts or questions please do not hesitate to ask them in our localization forum or real-time in our IRC Channel.