Subject: workaround for pkg/14051
To: None <tech-userlevel@netbsd.org>
From: Manuel Bouyer <bouyer@antioche.eu.org>
List: tech-userlevel
Date: 01/20/2002 18:10:35
Hi,
PR pkg/14051 describe a problem with perl, locales and the LANG variable.
Basically the problem is that LANG is used in a conflicting manner by 2
different systems: NLS and locale.
For NLS LANG is used to select the language of messages (e.g. LANG=fr).
For locale the value of LANG is used for foi if the corresponding LC_foo 
variable isn't set, and if LC_ALL isn't set (LC_ALL has the same role as
LANG, but takes over LANG).

So setting LANG for NLS will also inpact locale (only used by third-party
packages for now), but its value is usually invalid for the various locale
parameters. Some packages will complain about this invalid value, as described
in PR 14051. The solution is to set LC_ALL to "C", as LANG is only used if
LC_ALL isn't set.

To work around this I propose to set LC_ALL to "C" in the system files
(/etc/csh.cshrc and /etc/profile). This can't cause any problems as
"C" is the default value used when no variables are set, and this would
prevent bad interractions between the NLS and locale systems.

Comments ?

-- 
Manuel Bouyer <bouyer@antioche.eu.org>
--