How to compile gettext translations in setup.py of a Django app

Question

How can I make sure setup.py compiles projects PO files and include them whenever an sdist is created. This is a Django app and manual process to generate MO files is to run following command in the app's root directory:

django-admin compilemessages

(This means going one level deeper than setup.py)

I would like to avoid manually compiling MO files everytime. And I don't want to store them in the repository at all.

Answer 1

My simple solution (got some idea from Trac):

#!/usr/bin/env python
from setuptools import setup, find_packages
from setuptools.command.install_lib import install_lib as _install_lib
from distutils.command.build import build as _build
from distutils.cmd import Command


class compile_translations(Command):
    description = 'compile message catalogs to MO files via django compilemessages'
    user_options = []

    def initialize_options(self):
        pass

    def finalize_options(self):
        pass

    def run(self):
        import os
        import sys
        from django.core.management.commands.compilemessages import \
            compile_messages
        curdir = os.getcwd()
        os.chdir(os.path.realpath('app_name'))
        compile_messages(stderr=sys.stderr)
        os.chdir(curdir)


class build(_build):
    sub_commands = [('compile_translations', None)] + _build.sub_commands


class install_lib(_install_lib):
    def run(self):
        self.run_command('compile_translations')
        _install_lib.run(self)

setup(name='app',
    packages=find_packages(),
    include_package_data=True,
    setup_requires=['django'],
    ...
    cmdclass={'build': build, 'install_lib': install_lib,
        'compile_translations': compile_translations}
)

This will help you compile po files when you building egg or install package.