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. :)