Please don't create ending whitespace

[david-a-wheeler]

By policy our project doesn't allow files with whitespace errors, as determined by "git diff --check".

Unfortunately, "sync" creates .yml files with trailing whitespace. It's possible to fix it, but it's a pain, and I suspect many projects have this rule.

Could sync stop creating trailing whitespace?

Thanks so much! I only just started, but this does look like an interesting service.

FYI, here's the documentation from git diff --check:

       --check
           Warn if changes introduce whitespace errors. What are considered
           whitespace errors is controlled by core.whitespace configuration.
           By default, trailing whitespaces (including lines that solely
           consist of whitespaces) and a space character that is immediately
           followed by a tab character inside the initial indent of the line
           are considered whitespace errors. Exits with non-zero status if
           problems are found. Not compatible with --exit-code.

[MichaelHoste]

Do you have an example of an .yml file with trailing whitespace?

If I'm right, trailing whitespaces are only added by the YAML library if the value of a key is empty.

Example with no empty value (and no trailing spaces):

irb(main):003:0> { :a => 'a', :b => 'b' }.to_yaml
=> "---\n:a: a\n:b: b\n"

Example with empty value (and trailing space):

irb(main):007:0> { :a => nil, :b => 'b' }.to_yaml
=> "---\n:a: \n:b: b\n"

As you can see, there is a trailing space after "a:"

I don't know why the YAML library do that, and, of course, that's something we could manage to remove within the translation gem.

But isn't it something that we should leave the YAML library deal with?

[david-a-wheeler]

Yes, this only happens with empty keys.

Hmm.. sounds like I should report this to the YAML library instead.

[MichaelHoste]

sounds like I should report this to the YAML library instead.

Since you're not the first one to make that observation about the trailing whitespace, I already tried to do that but I don't know exactly where to report it.

Is it on:

• Psych: https://github.com/ruby/psych

or

• libYAML: https://github.com/yaml/libyaml/

After wandering around on the repositories, I found out that this issue is already reported on libYAML: yaml/libyaml#46

[david-a-wheeler]

Thanks, great info.

Okay, I've solved it for us by adding this to our "lib/tasks/default.rake" - you might find it useful to document this.

# Remove trailing whitespace after running "translation:sync".
# The "translation:sync" task syncs up the translations, but uses the usual
# YAML writer, which writes out trailing whitespace.  It should not do that,
# and the trailing whitespace causes later failures in testing.
# Problem already reported:
# - https://github.com/aurels/translation-gem/issues/13
# - https://github.com/yaml/libyaml/issues/46
# We'll run this enhancement to solve the problem.
Rake::Task['translation:sync'].enhance do
  puts 'Removing bogus trailing whitespace (bug workaround).'
  sh "cd config/locales/ && sed -i -e 's/ $//' *.yml && cd ../.."
end

[MichaelHoste]

It's finally fixed here: 46ec27b

And part of 1.19: https://github.com/translation/rails/releases/tag/v1.19

[david-a-wheeler]

Yay! Thanks!