Re: [gentoo-user] LINGUAS, L10N, and local-gen

[Alan McKinnon <alan.mckinnon@gmail.com>]

On 24/06/2016 17:40, Dale wrote:
> Peter Humphrey wrote:
>> On Friday 24 Jun 2016 09:54:35 Dale wrote:
>>
>>> I agree that the news item was confusing.  The guide it linked to wasn't
>>> much better either.  In the end, I just fiddled with the setting until I
>>> found a setting that didn't change what I already have, in other words,
>>> I got a clean emerge -uvaDN world.  My first couple runs wanted to
>>> remove things and I knew the setting wasn't right yet.  After it was all
>>> done, this is what I ended up with:
>>>
>>> LINGUAS="en_US en"
>>>
>>> I left the LANG setting as is for the moment.
>> Didn't you set L10N as well? I read the news item as requiring it.
>>
>
>
> As I said, the news item and even the guide the news item pointed to
> doesn't explain much.  When I run into a doc that doesn't give me enough
> info, or so much that it doesn't make sense, then I resort of trying
> settings until I get a output that tells me that the setting I tried
> works.  At first, I tried "en" but some packages were going to be
> rebuilt.  Then I tried "en-US" and that caused other packages to want to
> be rebuilt.  Then I put in both and I got what I expected, a clean
> emerge output that showed it wasn't going to change anything from what I
> already had.
>
> I guess when L10N starts causing packages to build differently, I'll add
> it . As it is, I'm not real sure what if anything it does that affects me.

Right now it does nothing, it is only setting the groundwork for 
something in the near future.

LINGUAS in the environment is a really bad idea, GNU gettext uses it to 
decide what translated messages to generate, but does it poorly and 
packages use it inconsistently. Gentoo uses it to decide what 
localization to use, which often includes which language packs to 
download and install - something that gettext's LINGUAS never goes near.

So the choice of name on Gentoo's part is really poor. What really needs 
to happen is that a dedicated variable L10N replaces what LINGUAS does 
in ebuilds, and when the whole tree is converted LINGUAS as a USE_EXPAND 
goes away. What you do right now is do what the news item says to do 
which is copy LINGUAS to L10N in make.conf, then it is done and you can 
go on your merry way confident that all will be fine.

Really, it's all there in the news item clear as daylight and completely 
unambiguous.

You fellows really like over-complicating news items and asking way too 
many "what if?" questions. Y'all need to knock that crap off now :-)