Re: [Qemu-devel] [Patch 0/2] Fix QEMU configure / make with Turkish (and maybe other) locale

[Stefan Weil <sw@weilnetz.de>]

Am 25.03.2012 21:52, schrieb Peter Maydell:
> On 25 March 2012 20:27, Andreas Färber <afaerber@suse.de> wrote:
>> Am 25.03.2012 21:11, schrieb Stefan Weil:
>>> These two patches override the user specific locale settings which
>>> can break QEMU builds. They set the default locale C for configure
>>> and make:
>>>
>>> [PATCH v2 1/2] Makefile: Set default locale C
>>> [PATCH 2/2] configure: Set default locale C (fix build for Turkish
>>>
>>> A side effect is that all messages which are produced during configure
>>> and make also use the default locale, so for example compiler messages
>>> are no longer localized.
>>
>> Reading the patches I thought of that issue, too, and don't think a
>> sledge hammer is the best solution here. The issue reported was tr (a
>> user-invisible invokation) misbehaving so why not fix just that? That
>> way user-directed output would still be in the language of the user's
>> choice.
>
> Well, configure should just set the locale to C, I think. This is how
> autoconf-generated configure scripts behave, for example. The rationale
> here is that configure shouldn't be outputting anything except (a) output
> to log files etc and (b) messages we control [and which we don't localise
> anyway!]. So we should favour not making it easy to accidentally
> introduce obscure bugs in some locales.

I fully agree.

>
> For make itself the argument is less clear-cut because as you say
> compiler messages go to the user.
>
> -- PMM

For make, it is still possible to set LANGUAGE.
I don't know whether it works with gcc (none of my native and
cross gcc installations has localized messages installed),
but I tested setting LANGUAGE with 'ls --help' where it works.

And compiler messages go first to the user, but sometimes also
to other developers (bug reports!), so even there are good
arguments for the C locale.

Regards,
Stefan W.