[arch-general] Including compiled C.UTF-8 locale by default in glibc package? Inbox

[Geert Hendrickx]

On Tue, Feb 15, 2022 at 00:08:04 +0100, Daan De Meyer via arch-general wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> Now that glibc 2.35 is available, could we enable and ship the
> compiled form of the new C.UTF-8 locale in glibc by default in Arch
> Linux?
> 
> From the glibc 2.35 release notes
> (https://sourceware.org/pipermail/libc-alpha/2022-February/136040.html):
> 
> > * Support for the C.UTF-8 locale has been added to glibc.  The locale
> >   supports full code-point sorting for all valid Unicode code points.  A
> >   limitation in the framework for fnmatch, regexec, and regcomp requires
> >   a compromise to save space and only ASCII-based range expressions are
> >   supported for now (see bug 28255).  The full size of the locale is
> >   only ~400KiB, with 346KiB coming from LC_CTYPE information for
> >   Unicode.  This locale harmonizes downstream C.UTF-8 already shipping
> >   in various downstream distributions.  The locale is not built into
> >   glibc, and must be installed.
> 
> Being able to rely on the existence of a UTF-8 english locale
> simplifies many use cases. A good example of issues introduced due to
> a lack of a built-in UTF-8 locale is
> https://github.com/systemd/systemd/pull/8340 which is a workaround
> added in 2018 that still exists today. Having the C.UTF-8 locale
> available by default in Arch would enable removing such workarounds.
> 
> Any thoughts?


That would indeed be neat.

But let's at least wait until the next glibc release[*] that will fix this:

Generating locales...
  C.UTF-8...failed to set locale!
[error] LC_MONETARY: value for field `mon_decimal_point' must not be an
empty string
 done

[*] or just grab these patches:
https://patchwork.sourceware.org/project/glibc/cover/20220131053442.3995804-1-carlos@redhat.com/
https://patchwork.sourceware.org/project/glibc/patch/20220131053442.3995804-2-carlos@redhat.com/
https://patchwork.ozlabs.org/project/glibc/patch/20220131053442.3995804-3-carlos@redhat.com/


	Geert