Unclear error raised by makemessages when /locale does not exist under app directory

[Anders Hovmöller]

I got this error message:

CommandError: Unable to find a locale path to store translations for file conftest.py

I had to google the error message and got to this: ​https://stackoverflow.com/questions/24937133/unable-to-find-a-locale-path-to-store-translations-for-file-init-py It would be better if the error message was simple and obvious so you could solve the problem yourself directly instead.

I thought the error message would be better if it said 'We are looking for a directory called "locale"" but after that change the command fails silently anyway. Maybe LOCALE_PATHS should also include the directory where manage.py is by default? Or some other error message should exist...

[Jacob Walls]

Thanks for the report. I agree the message needs to be improved. There might even be a case for creating /locale for the user when we've detected the user is running makemessages in the app directory (which we already detect), but I would be interested to hear more opinions.

Regarding the command failing silently, I cannot reproduce that. I marked a string for translation, created the directory app-level-directory/locale and ran manage.py makemessages -l es from the app directory and received translation files. If you suggest providing feedback to the user when no translatable strings are found that would be a separate issue.

[Josh Santos]

Looking into this now

[Jacob Walls]

​PR

[Chinmoy]

This ticket hasn't seen any recent updates. May I claim it?

EDIT: Received updates :)

[Mariusz Felisiak <felisiak.mariusz@…>]

In 9c6ba876:

Fixed #32145 -- Improved makemessages error message when app's locale directory doesn't exist.