Advanced Patterns

Max Prilutskiy·Updated2 months ago·2 min read

Advanced patterns for CI/CD localization - workflow selection, translation completeness checks, and merge conflict resolution.

Choosing a workflow

Four workflow patterns cover most team setups. Each has different trade-offs around automation, review overhead, and branch hygiene.

Workflow	Best for	Trade-off
Commit to main	Small teams, zero-friction updates	No review step for translations
PR from main	Teams that want to review translations	Requires manual PR approval
Commit to feature branch	Long-lived feature branches	Translation commits in branch history
PR from feature branch	Maximum control per feature	Multiple PRs per feature to manage

Start with "Commit to main" if you're unsure. It's the simplest workflow and prevents merge conflicts entirely since there's no branch divergence.

Checking translation completeness

The --frozen flag verifies that all content is translated without generating new translations. It exits with a non-zero status code if any content is missing:

npx lingo.dev@latest run --frozen

Use this as a deployment gate to prevent shipping untranslated content.

GitHub Actions

name: Check translations
on: [push, pull_request]
jobs:
  check:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v4
      - uses: actions/setup-node@v4
        with:
          node-version: 20
      - run: npx lingo.dev@latest run --frozen

Resolving merge conflicts

Merge conflicts occur when the i18n.lock file diverges between branches - typically when translations are updated independently in different branches.

Prevention

Committing translations directly to main (instead of using feature branches for translations) eliminates lockfile conflicts entirely.

Resolution via merge

Start the merge
```
git merge <branch-name>
```
Delete the conflicting lockfile
```
rm i18n.lock
```
Complete the merge
```
git add .
git merge --continue
```
Regenerate the lockfile
```
npx lingo.dev@latest lockfile --force
```
This rebuilds the lockfile from the current state of your source files without triggering new translations.

Resolution via rebase

The same approach works with rebase - delete i18n.lock during each conflict step, continue the rebase, then regenerate the lockfile at the end:

git rebase <branch-name>
# On each conflict: rm i18n.lock && git add . && git rebase --continue
npx lingo.dev@latest lockfile --force

Next Steps

[GitHub Actions]
Set up the official GitHub Action
[i18n.lock]
How the lockfile tracks translation state
[How It Works]
The CI/CD localization pipeline
[Setup]
Configure CI/CD for your project