Modernize python tooling by salman2013 · Pull Request #136 · openedx/RecommenderXBlock

salman2013 · 2026-07-14T18:39:42Z

Modernizes the Python tooling for this repo in three phases, aligning with the Open edX org standard established in openedx/sample-plugin.

Ticket: openedx/public-engineering#511
Parent ticket: openedx/public-engineering#506

Changes generated by Claude Sonnet 4.6 using the modernize-python-tooling skill, reviewed by a human.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Sonnet 4.6 <noreply@anthropic.com>

openedx-webhooks · 2026-07-14T18:39:48Z

Thanks for the pull request, @salman2013!

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uv sync creates a local .venv directory; pycodestyle was scanning installed packages inside it and failing. Co-Authored-By: Claude Sonnet 4.6 <noreply@anthropic.com>

Co-Authored-By: Claude Sonnet 4.6 <noreply@anthropic.com>

navinkarkera · 2026-07-15T15:44:19Z

-        self.compile_translations()
-
-    def compile_translations(self):
-        """
-        Compiles textual translations files(.po) to binary(.mo) files.
-        """
-        self.announce('Compiling translations')
-        try:
-            for dirname, _, files in os.walk(os.path.join('recommender', 'translations')):
-                for fname in files:
-                    if os.path.splitext(fname)[1] == '.po':
-                        po_path = os.path.join(dirname, fname)
-                        mo_path = os.path.splitext(po_path)[0] + '.mo'
-                        self.announce('Compiling translation at %s' % po_path)
-                        subprocess.check_call(['msgfmt', po_path, '-o', mo_path], cwd=self.install_lib)
-        except Exception as ex:
-            self.announce('Translations compilation failed: %s' % getattr(ex, 'message', str(ex)))


setup.py was compiling translations from .po to .mo files but now this is lost.
Is it still required?

I think we can remove this method—it's a legacy addition from about 10 years ago.

I verified the following references across the relevant repositories, and they appear to be sufficient to support translations for openedx:

https://github.com/openedx/RecommenderXBlock/blob/master/Makefile#L21

https://github.com/openedx/openedx-translations/blob/main/transifex.yml#L341

https://github.com/openedx/openedx-translations/blob/main/.github/workflows/extract-translation-source-files.yml#L49

@brian-smith-tcril, could you please confirm whether there are any other usages of this method that we should be aware of?

cc: @navinkarkera @feanil @salman2013

The flow I understand is:

make extract_translations takes source strings and creates an english .po file

GH workflows in the openedx-translations repo pull that .po file in

Translations happen on transifex, as translations are done .po files for other languages make it into the openedx-translations repo

atlas is used to pull .po files from the openedx-translations repo

Translations work

My first thought after seeing this was "doesn't compiling happen after pulling the xblock translations in platform?"

I asked Claude to dig into this a bit and got the following response (which makes sense to me)

What I found

There are two different things both called "compile_translations":

The setup.py method being removed (XBlockInstall.compile_translations, setup.py:23). This was a custom setuptools install command that ran at pip install time, walking recommender/translations/ for .po files and running msgfmt on each to produce .mo. It's only referenced via cmdclass={'install': XBlockInstall} (setup.py:86) — no other usages in the repo. This is the "legacy addition from ~10 years ago."

The make compile_translations target (Makefile) — i18n_tool generate + compilejsi18n. This is not removed by the PR and is unrelated to the install hook.

Compilation happens on the consuming platform's side at deploy time, not in this package. From edx-platform's Makefile:

pull_xblock_translations: ## pull xblock translations via atlas
python manage.py lms pull_xblock_translations --verbose $(ATLAS_OPTIONS)
python manage.py lms compile_xblock_translations
python manage.py cms compile_xblock_translations

So edx-platform runs atlas pull to fetch the translated .po files, then compile_xblock_translations produces the .mo. At runtime the XBlock just asks the platform's i18n service for them (recommender.py: self.runtime.service(self, 'i18n') → ugettext, and get_javascript_i18n_catalog_url for the JS catalog). The XBlock never compiles its own .mo.

Two things confirm the setup.py hook is dead weight: (a) no .po/.mo files are committed to this repo, so even at install time that os.walk found nothing to compile, and (b) in the atlas model translated files never ship inside the wheel anyway — they're pulled and compiled downstream.

navinkarkera · 2026-07-15T15:46:11Z

+    steps:
+    - uses: actions/checkout@de0fac2e4500dabe0009e67214ff5f5447ce83dd # v6.0.2
+      with:
+        ref: ${{ github.ref_name }}


Suggested change

ref: ${{ github.ref_name }}

ref: ${{ github.ref_name }}

fetch-depth: 0

Suggested by GPT 5.6-Sol

Checkout is shallow (fetch-depth: 1 by default), so semantic-release may not see tags or commit history and can fail/version incorrectly.

irfanuddinahmad · 2026-07-16T12:34:35Z

👋 Reviewed this against the same checklist we've been applying across the modernization effort. Nothing blocking — CI is green. One shared issue worth fixing:

pypa/gh-action-pypi-publish@release/v1 is a floating branch ref, not a pinned SHA. Same as flagged on the other PRs in this batch — this is what caused openedx/xblocks-core's release to fail with docker: manifest unknown (https://github.com/openedx/xblocks-core/actions/runs/29327012856/job/87066591905). Worth pinning to a commit SHA like the rest of this workflow's actions already are. (Traces back to openedx/sample-plugin's reference release.yml — filed openedx/sample-plugin#54 and openedx/xblocks-core#280 for that.)

major_on_zero/allow_zero_version are already correctly set here, nice.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Sonnet 4.6 <noreply@anthropic.com>

salman2013 and others added 3 commits July 14, 2026 23:20

chore: migrate package metadata to pyproject.toml (PEP 621)

2ee711a

Co-Authored-By: Claude Sonnet 4.6 <noreply@anthropic.com>

chore: switch dependency management from pip-tools to uv

ab1d810

Co-Authored-By: Claude Sonnet 4.6 <noreply@anthropic.com>

chore: add python-semantic-release and commitlint workflows

37f68ed

Co-Authored-By: Claude Sonnet 4.6 <noreply@anthropic.com>

openedx-webhooks added open-source-contribution PR author is not from Axim or 2U core contributor PR author is a Core Contributor (who may or may not have write access to this repo). labels Jul 14, 2026

openedx-webhooks added this to Contributions Jul 14, 2026

github-project-automation Bot moved this to Needs Triage in Contributions Jul 14, 2026

salman2013 mentioned this pull request Jul 14, 2026

Modernize Python repo | XBlocks openedx/public-engineering#511

Open

16 tasks

salman2013 and others added 2 commits July 14, 2026 23:43

fix: exclude .venv from pycodestyle check

50bb672

uv sync creates a local .venv directory; pycodestyle was scanning installed packages inside it and failing. Co-Authored-By: Claude Sonnet 4.6 <noreply@anthropic.com>

fix: rename workflow to Semantic Release in release.yml

bbe32a0

Co-Authored-By: Claude Sonnet 4.6 <noreply@anthropic.com>

mphilbrick211 moved this from Needs Triage to Ready for Review in Contributions Jul 15, 2026

mphilbrick211 requested a review from navinkarkera July 15, 2026 14:43

navinkarkera requested changes Jul 15, 2026

View reviewed changes

chore: switch PyPI publishing to OIDC trusted publisher

b4b18bd

salman2013 and others added 2 commits July 17, 2026 21:58

refactor: migrate to src layout

b48d299

Co-Authored-By: Claude Sonnet 4.6 <noreply@anthropic.com>

chore: standardize release.yml workflow

90f7145

Co-Authored-By: Claude Sonnet 4.6 <noreply@anthropic.com>

salman2013 force-pushed the modernize-python-tooling branch from 6ccf112 to 90f7145 Compare July 17, 2026 17:31

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