What is the correct way to include localisation in python packages?

Question

I am writing my own python application and I am wondering what is the correct way to include localisation in source distributions. I struggled with the documentation of setuptoo

Answer 1

For the first: there are tools for handling po-files in Python, suggest you look into Babel, then you get the extra commands for setup.py.

It should be possible to also hook the compile_catalogs as requisite for source build, but I haven't found need for it, as you can't test the messages from a package linked with python setup.py develop if you don't compile first. Also, maybe your source build does not need the .mo at all if you require Babel.

For the second: Our apps use the pyramid web framework, the convention there is to use package_data:

setup(
    # ...
    package_data={'yourpackage': ['i18n/*/LC_MESSAGES/*.mo' ]},
    # ...

then if your localizations are in yourpackage/i18n/ you can use pkg_resources to find the path, for example:

pkg_resources.resource_filename('yourpackage', 'i18n')

will point to the location of translations.