Allow language mapping for Google Play resources

[keunes]

Problem description

• Google play only accepts a specific list of languages, many of which with region indications: https://support.google.com/googleplay/android-developer/answer/9844778?visit_id=638668750577796187-2587717613&rd=1#zippy=%2Cview-list-of-available-languages
• Android prefers resources without region indications
• We have two different sets of languages in our translation management tool (Weblate); one for website & app, one for play store listings (full & short descriptions; screenshots)

Because of the above, we have to manually maintain the languages for all components (website has 4, play store listing 3, and the app itself 1). That's a bit of a pain.

Potential solutions/workarounds

Allow to provide a language mapping, or have such mapping built in. For example:

• if language source file exists without region indication, and Google Play expects one with region
  • Example 1: we have resources in bn (may be used both in Bangladesh & India). Gradle play publisher takes this content and provides it to Google with the code bn_BD.
  • Example 2: one might have translations in pt (again, without region). Gradle play publisher takes this and provides it to Google both with the codes pt_PT and pt_BR
• exact matches (with/without region) are taken as such
• if language source file exists with region indication, and Google Play expects without region, then it strips the region code
  • Example: source material in lt_LT, Grade play publisher takes this and provides it as lt to Google
• for cases with multiple matches, the user can indicate a mapping via some setting.
  • Example: ro_RO and ro_BG exist, and Google expects ro, then the user must indicate which resource is used to provided as ro or an error will be returned. (Bad example, just to show the point. Not sure if needed, given it's probably an unlikely scenario)
• for languages (& regions) that Google doesn't support, nothing is submitted (e.g. eo)

Additional context

I realise that this would be Triple-T covering for Googles weird stuff. But it would be dam handy :-)

[SUPERCILEX]

If you implement something and want to send a PR I consider accepting it, but honestly the behavior you're looking for might be best implemented with a preprocessing step you build in house as it seems pretty custom.

[keunes]

Thanks for the quick reply @SUPERCILEX

it seems pretty custom

I'm not sure if it's really that custom: the fact that Android holds different resource expectations (prefer without region) than Google Play store (very specific list, often with region) applies to all apps that publish to the Play store. And thus it applies to all users of Gradle play publisher. Or am I missing something here?

the behavior you're looking for might be best implemented with a preprocessing step you build in house

We're not entirely sure how this would work (what you had in mind). We're currently just manually running ./gradlew publishListing which takes the files to push content to Google Play.

We'd rather not adjust the file structure just for the Play store (we also publish to F-Droid and we're not sure if changing the structure would create issues), or work on different branches with (several) conversion steps (we've done that for our website and it created a monstrosity).

[SUPERCILEX]

I think that's fair, I'd be happy to accept a PR then.