Re: [PATCH 0/2] Avoiding incompatible locale data in LOCPATH

[Mark H Weaver <mhw@netris.org>]

ludo@gnu.org (Ludovic Courtès) writes:

> So with current ‘core-updates’, someone on a “foreign distro” needs to
> do:
>
>   guix package -i glibc-locales
>   export GUIX_LOCPATH=$HOME/.guix-profile/lib/locale/2.22
>
> Note the extra “/2.22”, which comes from commit f2d7bbb.  This is a bit
> of an annoyance for end users, but the point is that eventually this
> would allow us to recommend things like:
>
>   export GUIX_LOCPATH=$HOME/.guix-profile/lib/locale/2.22:$HOME/.guix-profile/lib/locale/2.23
>
> The only question is whether having the “/2.22” prefix by default is a
> good idea.  Opinions?

I think the "/2.22" suffix will be needed to prevent another awkward
transition the next time glibc makes an incompatible change to their
locales.  Suppose that 2.23 makes another incompatible change.  After
that, many Guix systems will have a mixture of software linked with
glibc-2.22 and glibc-2.23.

One question: when this happens, do we have a mechanism for
automatically setting GUIX_LOCPATH to:

  $HOME/.guix-profile/lib/locale/2.22:$HOME/.guix-profile/lib/locale/2.23

or will that have to be done manually?

     Mark