lrelease

lrelease is a command-line tool used in software development, primarily within the Qt framework. Its main purpose is to process and compile translation files, typically in the .ts (Translation Source) format, into a binary .qm (Qt Message) format. This .qm file can then be used by Qt applications to load and display translations for different languages.

The lrelease tool takes one or more .ts files as input and generates corresponding .qm files. These .qm files are optimized for runtime use, meaning they can be loaded efficiently by the application to provide localized user interfaces. The process involves parsing the .ts file, which contains source text strings and their corresponding translations, and converting them into a compact, binary format.

Developers typically use lrelease as part of their build process. After translators have finished their work on the .ts files, lrelease is invoked to create the distributable translation files. This allows applications to support multiple languages without embedding translation data directly into the main executable. The .qm files are usually deployed alongside the application executable, and the application dynamically loads the appropriate translation based on the user's system locale or a user-selected language. This separation of code and translations is a fundamental aspect of internationalization and localization in Qt applications.