From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Federico Beffa Subject: Re: Lack of locales in build environment Date: Tue, 10 Feb 2015 20:54:43 +0100 Message-ID: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8 Return-path: Received: from eggs.gnu.org ([2001:4830:134:3::10]:54542) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1YLGtS-0003xF-VM for guix-devel@gnu.org; Tue, 10 Feb 2015 14:54:47 -0500 Received: from Debian-exim by eggs.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1YLGtQ-00085x-Gd for guix-devel@gnu.org; Tue, 10 Feb 2015 14:54:46 -0500 List-Id: "Development of GNU Guix and the GNU System distribution." List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Errors-To: guix-devel-bounces+gcggd-guix-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Sender: guix-devel-bounces+gcggd-guix-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org To: Guix-devel John Darrington writes: > (i) we already are at 7 (4+3) packages requiring an UTF-8 locale > > Then that is a bug which should be filed against those pacakges. I just discovered the problem with the "scipy ecosystem" packages today and intended to fix them. But, before submitting changes, I wanted to check with the ML. If we decide to keep the status quo, then I will fix the packages. Otherwise, if we introduce a default UTF-8 locale or implement Andreas's suggestion, I will file a bug to avoid forgetting. > > (ii) This is another small step in > making maintenance easier by providing an environment setting that > sometimes helps. > > It sounds like a slippery slope. If we shovel in everything into the defaults, > that might possibly help somebody do something, someday we'll end up with a very > bloated system. The C locale is really an ancient relict. I think adding a more modern default locale to the build environment doesn't really bloat the system. > > The C locale is the canonical locale. UTF-8 is not the only characater encoding in > the world. English is not the only language in the world, and US English is not > the only dialect of English. I'm not a native english speaker and I understand the problem very well. In spite of this I do not know of any package providing documentation in other languages than english. That's the reason for suggesting a default locale of en_US.UTF-8 for the build systems. Regards, Fede