Django makemessages for apps in site-packages

Question

How can I collect translation strings outside of my project folder using Django's built-in makemessages facility? The management command makemessages is very convenient and I'd like to use it for applications located in site-packages.

Churchgoer

Answer 1

Other than makemessages I found PyBabel very useful. Here is a bind to Django itself: http://babel.edgewall.org/wiki/BabelDjango

Bac

Answer 2

(1) Activate a virtual environment where Django is installed.

(2) Go directory of the app for which you want the messages to be generated:

$ cd path/to/app/in/site/packages/

(3) Make sure it has "locale" directory. If not - make one.

$ mkdir locale

(4) From your app directory run the following command:

$ django-admin.py makemessages -l [LANGUAGE_CODE]

Example for Dutch:

$ django-admin.py makemessages -l nl

Example for Russian:

$ django-admin.py makemessages -l ru

Contrail

I'm not sure this is what the OP asks, does this collect strings outside of the project? As far as I know, this will just collect strings from html, txt, and py files inside of the project or app. – Overshine

Yes, it does collect strings from the package you are running it from. That's why we have cd path/to/app/in/site/packages/. – Contrail

Answer 3

With symbol links (ln -s) but it's not very convenient. Usually if the apps are on PYTHONPATH shouldn't the translations folders be catched by makemessages ?

Placket

Now I do use symlinks but that's an ugly workaround. It's hard-coded in makemessages.py to find files in the current working directory, it skips PYTHONPATH. – Churchgoer

When using symlinks remember to add the --symlinks option to makemessages – Overshine