[gentoo-dev] Re: Revise EAPI 6? (was: [RFC] ban use of base-4 casemods in ebuilds due to locale collation instability)

[Martin Vaeth <martin@mvath.de>]

Jason A. Donenfeld <zx2c4@gentoo.org> wrote:
>
> I'd be in favor of full-on LC_ALL=C.

Setting LC_ALL seems wrong as it is meant as a quick hack
and should not be relied on by a "generic" tool like portage.

Better define to *unset* LC_ALL (remembering the previous value,
see below) and to set (all?) other LC_* to defined values.

When we are at it: Maybe it is even sufficient to define only
LC_CTYPE=C
LC_NUMERIC=C
LC_COLLATE=C
LC_MESSAGES=C
LC_MONETARY=C

In any case, the old values should be kept (and for simplicity
defined to the previous LC_ALL if the latter was set),
so that the ebuild author is able to stick to the user's
choice for certain/all values if he needs to:

In particular, for LC_CTYPE, this might be necessary,
because of correct UTF8-support, as already mentioned
(the ebuild author cannot say LC_CTYPE=*.UTF8).
But also e.g. for LC_MONETARY, this might be necessary for some
strange local banking tools.

It is perhaps not necessary to (re)define LANG at all:
Setting LC_MESSAGES should be sufficient for most build-time
stuff to get readable logs, and LANG=C might be the main reason,
why some people might not like the change and decided e.g.
to patch it out in paludis, as mentioned in this thread.