Re: [gentoo-user] /etc/locale vs /etc/env.d/02locale?

[YoYo Siska <yoyo@gl.ksp.sk>]

On Thu, Jun 16, 2011 at 09:23:16AM -0700, Mark Knecht wrote:
> On Thu, Jun 16, 2011 at 9:00 AM, Paul Hartman
> <paul.hartman+gentoo@gmail.com> wrote:
> > On Thu, Jun 16, 2011 at 10:45 AM, Mark Knecht <markknecht@gmail.com> wrote:
> >> Is there a simple explanation concerning the difference between the
> >> two locales I have seen on Gentoo machines?
> >>
> >> 1) /etc/locale, as specified in the installation documents
> >>
> >> 2) /etc/env.d/02locale as has been discussed on the list recently
> >
> > I'm not near a Gentoo machine right now, but off the top of my head IIRC:
> >
> > /etc/locale.gen contains a list of locales to be compiled when glibc
> > is emerged. These will be available to be used.
> >
> > /etc/env.d/02locale specifies which of those locales you actually want
> > to use for the system-wide default (the LC variables)
> 
> Thanks for the response Paul.
> 
> Does that mean that the /etc/locale.gen is used only by glibc and not
> really by the system? If so, what is glibc doing with these beyond
> letting me system run programs?
> 
> If 02locale specifies what the system is using, then should it be
> 02locale that's in the install documents vs off in an optional Gentoo
> Localization guide?
> 
> Note that the /etc/locale.gen stuff is marked optional in the guide so
> presumably it isn't actually needed. All I've determined about it is
> that it reduces the amount of time emerge spends buildingglibc/gcc.

locale.gen is in the install docs, because it allows you to choose which
locales should be built, ie after emerging libc, which locales you can
choose from... if you don't modify it, you get a lot of usual locales
built...

/etc/env.d/02locale is used to actually choose which one of the built
ones will be used as the "default" locale for (almost) everything that
runs... I gues it might deserve a mention in the install guide... 
though it actullly isn't any special file... the actuall locale is set
by setting an enviroment variable (LANG or the specific LC_...), you
could set it in your .bashrc / .bash_profile only for your user, or
anywhere where it would apply to most programs, ie /etc/profile ...
Gentoo has the mechanism, that anything that gets put into /etc/env.d is
then (through env-update, which you have certainly run from time to time
;) merged together to /etc/profile.env, which is in turned sourced by
/etc/profile (and posibly other things) so that it is just logical to
put it there... but the actual name of the file doesn't really matter ;)


yoyo