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

[Ludovic Courtès]

Mark H Weaver <address@hidden> skribis:

> address@hidden (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.

Yes.  But we could just as well have ‘glibc-utf8-locales’ where
everything is in lib/locale directly, and ‘glibc-transition-locales’
where things are under lib/locale/2.22 and lib/locale/2.23.  Dunno.

> 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?

Unless glibc is in the profile, that has to be done manually.

Ludo’.