[Python-Dev] Dealing with test__locale failure on OS X before a3

[Bob Ippolito]

On Aug 26, 2004, at 11:33 PM, Brett C. wrote:

> Bob Ippolito wrote:
>
>> Well there are two ways to fix it:
>> 1) Call __setonlyClocaleconv() if it's there via weak linking or 
>> whatnot around any setlocale or the like.  This will at least affect 
>> OS X 10.3, I'm not sure about 10.2, and the rumor says it's fixed 
>> "now" in 10.4.
>> 2) Write a whole new module that uses Apple API for localization.
>> Obviously 2 is the "best" solution, but requires the most time.  1 is 
>> easy-ish and will work reliably on all the machines that need it 
>> (assuming the rumor is correct) unless Apple does something totally 
>> strange and changes the behavior of a previous-release OS for reasons 
>> other than security flaws :)
>
> OK, starting to sound like detecting __setonlyClocaleconv() in 
> configure.in and using that info to deal with it is winning with other 
> people, at least as an initial solution.  Everyone else agree with 
> this?

No.  Don't use configure.  The machine you compile Python with is not 
necessarily the machine you will use Python with (for example, 
compiling a 10.2 compatible Python and running on 10.4).  Use dyld or 
CFBundle API to look up the function dynamically, or use weak linking.

> I just checked and it looks like calling the function with a non-zero 
> argument will force the locale back to "C" even if you just set it to 
> a specific locale; so the function seems to force the locale to "C" 
> and lock it down.  So it will most likely need to be called right 
> before the first setlocale call made by Python (I think it is in 
> PyInitialize() ) and then not call it again.

Calling the function with a non-zero argument forces the locale to stay 
at "C", and it returns the last value that was passed to it.  I would 
say that any Python function that depends on locale should do:

x = __setonlyClocaleconv(0)
# do python stuff carefully
__setonlyClocaleconv(x)

Otherwise you will probably break CoreFoundation (which could break 
just about anything, since nearly all Apple APIs depend on it).

Maybe this is just about as much work as writing a CoreFoundation based 
locale module?  I'm not sure which parts of Python are affected by 
setlocale().

-bob