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

[Federico Beffa <beffa@ieee.org>]

On Mon, Oct 5, 2015 at 11:09 PM, Ludovic Courtès <ludo@gnu.org> wrote:
> Federico Beffa <beffa@ieee.org> skribis:
>
>> I'm wondering if it would be better to point GUIX_LOCPATH to
>>
>> export GUIX_LOCPATH=$HOME/.guix-profile/lib/locale
>>
>> and have 'glibc' itself to append it's own version number to that
>> string. In this way pre 2.22 programs (last official Guix(SD) release)
>> would find pre-2.22 locale in '/$HOME/.guix-profile/lib/locale'.
>
> With the discussion on IRC following your message, I ended up going back
> to the solution that appends /2.22 to the GUIX_LOCPATH entries
> automatically:
>
>   http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.gnu.guix.devel/12004
>
> We’ll settle on that and declare the problem solved now.  :-)
>
> Sorry for the hesitations.  It’s one of these situations where we have
> conflicting principles: simplifying the users lives, and remaining close
> to what upstream does.

I think this is the right thing to do. It's not just about making the
lives of users easier, but rather preventing that users will see their
profile break after an update (when a new 'glibc' with incompatible
locales will come out). IMO such a behavior would just be bad design.

Thanks,
Fede