Tracking

Lunaria implements a unique localization tracking system powered by Git. This guide explains how it works, how to manipulate it, and all its associated features.

How it works

To track changes, Lunaria uses the repository’s git history to compare the latest major commit date from the source and localized version of a file. If the localization has been last changed after the source, then it is considered up-to-date. Otherwise, it is considered outdated.

A “major commit” is the name given to a commit that has significant content changes. When a major commit is merged into the tracked branch, it will trigger status changes on Lunaria. Those are predictable, and can only be one of the following:

The source content was changed, marking localizations as outdated.
A localization was updated, marking it as done.

By default, every commit is considered major, and to allow for certain commits to not be considered, Lunaria offers a few ways to manipulate status changes.

Set up tracking

To add files to Lunaria’s tracking system, you need to add the files field to your lunaria.config.json file. It will receive an array of objects of the File type, like the following example:

{
  "files": [
    {
      "location": "src/content/docs/**/*.md",
      "pattern": "src/content/docs/@lang/@path",
      "type": "universal"
    }
  ]
}

In this example, Lunaria will track all Markdown files within the src/content/docs directory and its subdirectories. More entries can be added to files to track different sets of files differently or to better organize them in the generated dashboard since the order in the array will be respected.

Read further to understand how all of these fields work.

`location`

The location field expects a glob pattern string that matches all of the desired files to be tracked within all locales.

Lunaria’s glob patterns are powered by micromatch, and although it’s not the place for this documentation to explain glob patterns, here are a few common snippets that you can find useful to know:

**/*.md: Matches all .md files on the directory and its subdirectories.
*.md: Matches all .md files on the directory.
**/*.{md,mdx}: Matches all .md and .mdx files on the directory and its subdirectories.
**/!(index).md: Matches all .md files on the directory and its subdirectories, except for the index.md file.

`pattern`

The pattern field expects a path-to-regexp string that will be used to extract the shared path of files and infer their relation. Lunaria adds the @lang and @path placeholders to help you indicate where the locale and the rest of the path should be added in.

In very few cases, @lang and @path might not correctly represent your project’s file structure. Internally, these placeholders are replaced with slightly opinionated :lang and :path path parameters. You can also use these parameters instead of placeholders, tweaking them with prefixes, suffixes, and/or modifiers to match your project’s file structure.

For example, to support Nextra’s rather unique i18n file structure, you could use the following pattern using :path+ instead of @path:

{
  "files": [
    {
      "location": "pages/**/*.mdx",
      "pattern": "pages/:path+.@lang.mdx",
      "type": "universal"
    }
  ]
}

`type`

The type field determines how these files will be treated by Lunaria. Different types can change and augment how files are displayed in the dashboard, have different requirements (e.g. supported file types), and how their outdated/done status is calculated.

For more information, read the available types in the file types section of the configuration reference.

`ignore`

Optionally, the ignore field can be added to exclude specific files from tracking. It expects an array of glob pattern strings that match all of the files to be ignored, for example:

{
  "files": [
    {
      "location": "src/content/docs/**/*.md",
      "pattern": "src/content/docs/@lang/@path",
      "type": "universal",
      "ignore": ["src/content/docs/**/old.md"]
    }
  ]
}

Granularly enabling files for localization

You may wish to only enable certain files for localization, e.g. only files that have been in the source locale for more than a week, or that aren’t expecting to be restructured soon.

One way of doing so would be to exclude specific files with the ignore field, but this would require you to manually update the configuration file every time a file is ready for localization.

Instead, you can use the localizableProperty available to files that accept frontmatter metadata (e.g. Markdown, MDX, YAML). Every file where the property is true will be added to the dashboard, and omitted otherwise:

Add the localizableProperty field to your lunaria.config.json file, with the name of the frontmatter property that will be used to enable localization:
lunaria.config.json
```
{
  "localizableProperty": "isLocalizable"
}
```
Add the frontmatter property to the files you want to enable for localization with the value true:
my-page.mdx
```
---
title: My page
isLocalizable: true
---

# My MDX page
```

Manipulating status changes

In a few cases, it might be relevant to intervene in the tracking system to prevent undesired status changes from happening.

This is helpful when there are changes that shouldn’t mark localizations as outdated, like typo fixes in the source content, or when a change shouldn’t mark a localization as done, like updating a broken link in an otherwise outdated localization.

Ignoring commits

To ignore all changes within a commit, you can add a ignoreKeyword to your commit or pull request’s title (when squash merging). By default, the keywords fix typo and lunaria-ignore will be ignored.

For example, the following commit title would be ignored:

[lunaria-ignore] Format localization files

On the other hand, the following commit title would trigger status changes:

Add a new section on `getting-started.mdx` file

Different ignoreKeywords can be added, overriding the default ones:

Add the ignoreKeywords field to your lunaria.config.json file, with an array of keywords to be ignored:
lunaria.config.json
```
{
  "ignoreKeywords": ["@ignore", "[ci]", "[format]"]
}
```

The ignoreKeywords feature can also be disabled completely:

Add the ignoreKeywords field to your lunaria.config.json file, with an empty array:
lunaria.config.json
```
{
  "ignoreKeywords": []
}
```

Triggering changes per-file

Sometimes, a commit might include both changes that should trigger status changes and changes that shouldn’t, especially when there are circular references between files that need to be in the same pull request to avoid errors. When that’s the case, your best option is to use a tracker directive.

A tracker directive is a custom syntax added to a commit’s description with a list of files or globs separated with ; that will be considered by the tracker directive:

@lunaria-ignore:docs/en/first.mdx;docs/ja/second.mdx;docs/**/third.mdx

`@lunaria-track`

The @lunaria-track directive will track the changes of all the listed files, and ignore all the ones that weren’t on the same commit.

Example:

@lunaria-track:src/content/docs/en/**.mdx

`@lunaria-ignore`

The @lunaria-ignore directive will ignore the changes of all the listed files, and track all the ones that weren’t on the same commit.

Example:

@lunaria-ignore:src/content/docs/ja/**.mdx