Title: INCLUDE_DESCRIPTIONS should output XML comments for android-strings format
M
Mikko Koskenseppä
Description:
When using the android-strings format, UPDATE_DESCRIPTIONS correctly reads XML comments (<!-- ... -->) above <string> elements and stores them as descriptions in SimpleLocalize. However, when downloading with INCLUDE_DESCRIPTIONS, the descriptions are not written back as XML comments in the output file.
Steps to reproduce:
- Upload an Android strings.xml containing XML comments with UPDATE_DESCRIPTIONS —> descriptions appear correctly in the dashboard.
- Download with INCLUDE_DESCRIPTIONS and android-strings format —> output contains no XML comments.
Expected behavior:
Downloaded file should include descriptions as XML comments above the corresponding <string> elements, matching the original upload format. This works perfectly with our iOS app.
Why this matters:
We're migrating to the SimpleLocalize GitHub App, which downloads directly overwrite the existing file, which means we loose the comments on our side.
Currently we work around this by using a Python merge script in a GitHub Actions workflow that preserves XML comments when merging downloaded translations back into the existing file. However, this workaround is not compatible with the SimpleLocalize GitHub App, which handles file downloads and PR creation automatically without the ability to run post-processing scripts.
Precedent:
About a year ago I made a similar request for .xcstrings files, and you added the USE_CODE_DESCRIPTIONS option which helped. This is the same issue but for android-strings, as the upload path reads XML comments, but the download path doesn't write them back. Would it be possible to add similar support for the Android format?
Thank you for a good service :)