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

[Greg Minshall]

Marius,

> This mail just reminded me that one of my own projects didn't handle a messed 
> locale setup gracefully in the past causing multiple users (that apparently 
> had a messed setup) to report issues, e.g. https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/
> syncthingtray#comment-816671 and https://github.com/Martchus/syncthingtray/
> issues/109. And when I searched for the error to investigate the issue I found 
> many results. If it helps preventing applications from crashing completely 
> with errors like "locale::facet::_S_create_c_locale name not valid" it is 
> likely worth including.

fwiw, for people writing code: a friend suggested something like this:
first try user's configured locale (environment variables).  if that
fails, try the "C" locale.  if that also fails, print out a warning, and
continue to run:
----
    /* modified from https://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25/unicode.html */
    if (!setlocale(LC_CTYPE, "") &&
        !setlocale(LC_CTYPE, "C")) {
        fprintf(stderr, "Warning: Can't set the specified locale! "
                "Check LANG, LC_CTYPE, LC_ALL.\n");
        /* but, keep going */
    }
----
(though, of course, "continue to run" may not work in your case, i.e.,
Boost or other frameworks, etc.)

cheers, Greg