Re: Frequent locales problems for new users

[Vagrant Cascadian <vagrant@debian.org>]

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On 2020-03-17, Leo Famulari wrote:
> Warning! Locales! New users seem to have trouble with Guix locales every
> day.
>
> I think we can improve the situation.
>
> First, we can deprecate the glibc-utf8-locales package and not mention
> it in the manual section Application Setup. I've seen users think they
> had to install it in order to get UTF-8 support. Everyone should be
> using glibc-locales. Eventually we can rename it to
> 'glibc-locales-for-tests', and hide the package too.
>
> Second, we need to make sure that guix-install.sh is setting up
> GUIX_LOCPATH correctly. I see that the binary tarball's store includes
> glibc-utf8-locales, so it should be possible for things to "just work",
> ignoring that it's the wrong locales package. Does anyone know any
> particular issues with the installer that would cause trouble?

I neglecteed to chime in way back when, but in irc the other day issues
around locales came up and I wondered ...

Any compelling reason not to put each locale into it's own package
and/or output?

You could have meta-packages which pull in specific sets
"glibc-locales-es" which pull in all spanish locales, or
"glibc-locales-all" or "glibc-locales-all-utf8" which pulls in
everything. Or some other semi-logical splitting.

That way users could install exactly the locales they want. It could be
selected from the installer, and install only the specific locales they
want, or sets of locales they want, etc.


live well,
  vagrant

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