Why do I get errors with "python manage.py makemessages"?

edit

Firstly - for Askbot please use command jinja2_makemessages (it's the same, but works with our templates).

The error that you've shown indicates that possibly your python environment has not been initiated properly or you might be lacking the project files such as settings.py, __init__.py, all the files made by the startproject command (or in the case of askbot - with askbot-setup command).

I was having the same issue here, and I found that I should run this command in askbot main directory where is 'locale' directory located, in my case I have two directories

/apache/askbot

The main app directory contains the 'templates' and 'locale' directories...etc. and

/apache/http/app

Where 'static' directory located and the manage.py and settings.py files

So in my case to make the following commands work correctly

$ python manage.py jinja2_makemessages 
$ python manage.py compilemessages 
$ python manage.py makemessages

simply do the following

$ cd /apache/askbot
$ python ../http/app/manage.py compilemessages