Testing and QA

Keep golden tests in English

Localization follows the user’s environment, so a developer with a Japanese desktop would otherwise get Japanese output in your tests. Set LOCALIZER_LANG=en in the environment of the process under test. In most test harnesses this is a one-line change:

cmd := exec.Command(binaryPath, args...)
cmd.Env = append(os.Environ(), "LOCALIZER_LANG=en")

Tests that build the command tree without going through your main aren’t affected, because Localize is never called there.

Try a language

LANG=ja_JP.UTF-8 yourcli --help      # the way your users select a language
LOCALIZER_LANG=de yourcli --help     # force one, whatever the system settings are

Find strings that aren’t localized

Pseudo-localization rewrites every string Localizer knows about, so anything left in plain English doesn’t go through Localizer yet:

$ LOCALIZER_LANG=qps taskctl --help
⟦ţášķçţļ ķééþš á šɱáļļ ļîšţ öƒ ţášķš.
Ûšé îţ ţö áďď, ļîšţ áñď çöɱþļéţé ţášķš.⟧

⟦Ûšáĝé:⟧
  taskctl [command]

Two more switches help with coverage:

• LOCALIZER_DEBUG=1 reports untranslated help strings on stderr.

• LOCALIZER_DUMP=<file> writes every help string in the command tree as JSON, including whether each one was translated:

  {
    "language": "ja",
    "entries": [
      { "kind": "short", "command": "taskctl add", "text": "Add a task.", "translated": true },
      { "kind": "flag", "command": "taskctl add", "flag": "due", "text": "Due date in YYYY-MM-DD format.", "translated": true }
    ]
  }

  kind is one of short, long, example, deprecated, group, flag or flag_deprecated.

Terminal width

Translations can be longer than English, and CJK characters take two columns. Localizer keeps flag columns aligned the same way Cobra does. For your own tables, prefer a library that measures display width (for example one based on go-runewidth) over text/tabwriter, which counts runes.