Re: enforcing an UTF8 locale while building a package

[Chris Lamb <lamby@debian.org>]

Hi Norbert et al.,

> it seems that msgfmt has problems when run in a C locale
[…]
> [force a] utf8 locale during the build process

I'm not sure whether the following applies in the case of msgfmt;
this is more of a general remark.

One thing I picked up via the Reproducible Builds project (has it
happens to vary such things) is that simply forcing the locale in
the build (or the timezone, etc. etc.) can move errors/warnings/bugs
to our users at runtime.

In other words, simply forcing the *build* to do the right thing
can mean we are hiding issues that should be fixed elsewhere

Just as one example, a timezone library that did not work properly
in timezones beyond UTC+0800, etc. Forcing the build to be in UTC
would certainly fix the FTBFS but... *grin*


Regards,

-- 
      ,''`.
     : :'  :     Chris Lamb
     `. `'`      lamby@debian.org / chris-lamb.co.uk
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