Automatic compilation of parent templates

Question

I am trying to setup dynamic compilation of Cheetah templates, useful for development (so I don't have to recompile them with cheetah compile after each change). Seems like Cheetah.Template.Template is right API for that, but it simply doesn't handle parent templates.

So if I have:

 -- __init__.py
 -- index.tmpl:
    #extends layout.A
 -- layout/
          -- __init__.py
          -- A.tmpl:
          #echo 'Hello!'

If I run Python in root directory, I'd get the next:

>>> from Cheetah.Template import Template; t = Template(file='index.tmpl')
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
  File "/usr/local/lib/python2.6/site-packages/Cheetah-2.4.3-py2.6-freebsd-7-amd64.egg/Cheetah/Template.py", line 1259, in __init__
    self._compile(source, file, compilerSettings=compilerSettings)
  ...
  ImportError: No module named A

If I compile A.tmpl with cheetah compile, error disappears, but changes in template doesn't affect result of index.tmpl compilation:

$ cat layout/A.tmpl
#echo 'Hello, world!'

$ python
>>> from Cheetah.Template import Template; t = Template(file='index.tmpl')
>>> str(t)
'Hello!'

Should I recompile all parent templates by myself (e.g. like Aquarium framework does)?

Cheetah version 2.4.

Any tips about Django1.3\Cheetah integration are also appreciated.

Answer 1

Some where early in your process startup, include the following two lines:

import Cheetah.ImportHooks 
Cheetah.ImportHooks.install() 

I believe this will give you the behavior you are looking for.

This is not documented in the main docs, but Tavis Rudd suggested this in response to a similar question on the Cheetah mailing list.