Problems running lupdate from within Qt Creator

Robert Hairgrove

The lupdate tool apparently does not honor the -extensions command-line option when I try to separate the strings into two different *.ts files when running the tool from within Qt Creator. I am using Qt 5.15.5 with Qt Creator 5.0.3.

Background: in the application I am creating, most of the strings marked for translation are kept in one *.ts file and compiled into an external *.qm file which is loaded at runtime. This is working OK, except that there are some (just a few) strings which need to be translated (error messages displayed in the main() function before any settings file is loaded), and this stub *.qm file should be embedded into the application resources.

In previous versions of Qt, I was able to place the smaller embedded strings into two files which have the extension *.cxx. All of the other strings are in *.cpp files. In my *.pro file, there is a TRANSLATIONS section; in the Tools/Options/Environment/External Tools, I have entered this string under Linguist/Update translations (lupdate)/Arguments:

-extensions 'ui,cpp' %{CurrentProject:FilePath}

However, when running lupdate from within Qt Creator, it seems to ignore the fact that 'cxx' is removed from the extensions list, and all strings are dumped into the same *.ts file. If I run lupdate outside of Qt Creator, I can make it work as desired. Somehow, I suspect that Qt Creator is ignoring the -extensions argument?

Here is the *.pro file of a small test project:

QT += core gui widgets

CONFIG += c++11

SOURCES += \
    CppDialog.cpp \
    CxxDialog.cxx \  # should NOT be put into the *.ts file!
    main.cpp \
    MainWindow.cpp

HEADERS += \
    CppDialog.hpp \
    CxxDialog.hpp \
    MainWindow.hpp

FORMS += \
    MainWindow.ui

TRANSLATIONS += \
    test_translations_de_DE.ts

Attached is a screenshot of the resulting *.ts file open in linguist:

Robert Hairgrove

Also, I tried writing both -extensions 'ui,cpp' ... and -extensions ui,cpp ... (with and without single quotes), and the result is the same.

Robert Hairgrove

In the meantime, I have tried running this from the command line. It does the same thing when I use the *.pro file,, so it doesn't have anything to do with Qt Creator.

The only reason I thought it was working before is because I specified the file extensions to use and not the project file.

When I navigate to the directory containing the sources, this works:

lupdate -extensions 'ui,cpp' . -ts test_translations_de_DE.ts

Result:

Scanning directory '.'...
Updating 'test_translations_de_DE.ts'...
    Found 5 source text(s) (5 new and 0 already existing)

Note that only 5 strings were inserted into the *.ts file...

But this doesn't work:

lupdate -extensions 'ui,cpp' test_translations.pro

Result:

Info: creating stash file xxxx/test_translations/.qmake.stash
Updating 'test_translations_de_DE.ts'...
    Found 7 source text(s) (7 new and 0 already existing)

SimonSchroeder

I am not sure what the underlying problem is in your case. However, there is one thing I'd like to add: In our project running lupdate on the project file takes ours (I haven't bothered to wait for it to finish). Running it instead on the directory only takes a couple of seconds (less than a minute). So, IMHO it is not advisable to run lupdate on a project file once the project starts to get larger. If I remember correctly, doing it on the project file will also look for translations in 3rd party code (which in our case are in different directories than our own source code).

Robert Hairgrove

@SimonSchroeder Thanks for your suggestions. Yes, I have noticed that it takes a very long time to run lupdate from within the project, and also looking for translated strings in 3rd party libraries which I have added as source code to the project.

I think from now on that I will handle translations only from the command line, or from custom scripts outside of the Qt Creator environment. It seems to be the only solution for splitting the translations as I have described above.

Robert Hairgrove

In the meantime, I found the solution for me that works here:
https://lists.qt-project.org/pipermail/interest/2017-December/028990.html

I have the .cxx file in a separate folder called locale which I exclude (along with 3rd-party code) like this in the .pro file:

lupdate_only {
  TR_EXCLUDE += \
    ../3rd_party/* \
    src/locale/*
}

At first, this didn't work until I realized that the /* after the folder name is important.

Also, my lupdate finishes now in a second or two, as opposed to several minutes before. :)