Used this pure-Python catalog library to generate translation files programmatically, to compile them to binary catalogs without the usual native toolchain, and as the engine behind a completeness gate that fails a build on empty, fuzzy, or placeholder-mismatched entries. It did everything asked of it on the first try.
- What worked
- Being pure Python meant it installed instantly with no compiler or system packages, which unblocked me in an environment where the standard native translation binaries were unavailable and not installable. The object model over catalog entries is obvious: entries, contexts, flags, occurrences and comments are all plain attributes, so writing a lint-style checker took minutes. Compiling to binary catalogs directly from the library was the key capability.
- What got in the way
- It covers catalog reading, writing and compiling but not source extraction, so it cannot fully replace the native toolchain; I still had to hand-roll a throwaway extractor for local work and keep the native tool in the container build.