[Python-ideas] PEP 540: Add a new UTF-8 mode

[Victor Stinner]

2017-01-06 22:20 GMT+01:00 Barry Warsaw <barry at python.org>:
>>Because I have the impression that nowadays all Linux distributions are UTF-8
>>by default and you have to show some bloody-mindedness to end up with a POSIX
>>locale.
>
> It can still happen in some corner cases, even on Debian and Ubuntu where
> C.UTF-8 is available and e.g. my desktop defaults to en_US.UTF-8.  For
> example, in an sbuild/schroot environment[*], the default locale is C and I've
> seen package build failures because of this.  There may be other such "corner
> case" environments where this happens too.

Right, that's the whole point of the Nick's PEP 538 and my PEP 540:
it's still common to get the POSIX locale.

I began to list examples of practical use cases where you get the POSIX locale.
https://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0540/#posix-locale-used-by-mistake

I'm not sure about the title of the section: "POSIX locale used by mistake".

Barry: About chroot, why do you get a C locale? Is it because no
locale is explicitly configured? Or because no locale is installed in
the chroot?

Would it work if we had a tool to copy the locale from the host when
creating the chroot: env vars and the data files required by the
locale (if any)?

The chroot issue seems close to the reported chroot issue:
http://bugs.python.org/issue28180

I understand that it's more a configuration issue, than a deliberate
choice to use the POSIX locale. Again, the user requirement is that
Python 3 should just work without any kind of specific configuration,
as other classic UNIX tools.

Victor