nova uses gettext so that user-facing strings such as log messages appear in the appropriate language in different locales.
To use gettext, make sure that the strings passed to the logger are wrapped in a _() function call. For example:
LOG.debug(_("block_device_mapping %s"), block_device_mapping)
Do not use locals() for formatting messages because: 1. It is not as clear as using explicit dicts. 2. It could produce hidden errors during refactoring. 3. Changing the name of a variable causes a change in the message. 4. It creates a lot of otherwise unused variables.
If you do not follow the project conventions, your code may cause the LocalizationTestCase.test_multiple_positional_format_placeholders test to fail in nova/tests/test_localization.py.
The _() function is found by doing:
from nova.i18n import _