Command-Line Interface

Babel includes a command-line interface for working with message catalogs, similar to the various GNU gettext tools commonly available on Linux/Unix systems.

Contents

1 extract
2 init

When properly installed, Babel provides a script called babel:

$ babel --help
usage: babel subcommand [options] [args]

options:
  --version             show program's version number and exit
  -h, --help            show this help message and exit

subcommands:
  extract   extract messages from source files and generate a POT file
  init      create new message catalogs from a template

The babel script provides a number of sub-commands that do the actual work. Those sub-commands are described below.

1 extract

The extract sub-command can be used to extract localizable messages from a collection of source files:

$ babel extract --help
usage: babel extract [options] dir1 <dir2> ...

extract messages from source files and generate a POT file

options:
  -h, --help            show this help message and exit
  --charset=CHARSET     charset to use in the output
  -k KEYWORDS, --keyword=KEYWORDS
                        keywords to look for in addition to the defaults. You
                        can specify multiple -k flags on the command line.
  --no-default-keywords
                        do not include the default keywords
  -F MAPPING_FILE, --mapping=MAPPING_FILE
                        path to the extraction mapping file
  --no-location         do not include location comments with filename and
                        line number
  --omit-header         do not include msgid "" entry in header
  -o OUTPUT, --output=OUTPUT
                        path to the output POT file
  -w WIDTH, --width=WIDTH
                        set output line width (default 76)
  --no-wrap             do not break long message lines, longer than the
                        output line width, into several lines
  --sort-output         generate sorted output (default False)
  --sort-by-file        sort output by file location (default False)
  --msgid-bugs-address=EMAIL@ADDRESS
                        set report address for msgid
  --copyright-holder=COPYRIGHT_HOLDER
                        set copyright holder in output
  -c TAG, --add-comments=TAG
                        place comment block with TAG (or those preceding
                        keyword lines) in output file. One TAG per argument
                        call

2 init

The init sub-command creates a new translations catalog based on a PO template file:

$ babel init --help
usage: babel init [options]

create new message catalogs from a template

options:
-h, --help      show this help message and exit
-D DOMAIN, --domain=DOMAIN
                domain of PO file (defaults to lower-cased project
                name)
-i INPUT_FILE, --input-file=INPUT_FILE
                name of the input file
-d OUTPUT_DIR, --output-dir=OUTPUT_DIR
                path to output directory
-o OUTPUT_FILE, --output-file=OUTPUT_FILE
                name of the output file (default
                '<output_dir>/<locale>/<domain>.po')
-l LOCALE, --locale=LOCALE
                locale for the new localized catalog
--first-author=FIRST_AUTHOR_NAME
                name of first author
--first-author-email=FIRST_AUTHOR_EMAIL
                email of first author
--project-name=NAME   the project name
--project-version=VERSION
                the project version