Bug#166979: New localedef behavior in glibc 2.3

[barbier@linuxfr.org (Denis Barbier)]

On Tue, Mar 25, 2003 at 09:13:09PM +0900, GOTO Masanori wrote:
> At Mon, 24 Mar 2003 22:46:48 +0100,
> Denis Barbier wrote:
> > 
> > Package: locales
> > Version: 2.3.1-16
> > Followup-For: Bug #166979
> > 
> > Upstream changelog contains this snippet for glibc v2.3:
> >   * Loading of locale data is faster due to the introduction of a locale
> >     archive.  Implemented by Roland McGrath and Ulrich Drepper.
> > 
> > And indeed locale informations are now gathered within
> > /usr/lib/locale/locale-archive instead of /usr/lib/locale/<locale_name>/.
> 
> That's right.
> 
> > Old behavior is emulated with 'localedef --no-archive'; this flag
> > should be set in /usr/sbin/locale-gen until all programs (like
> > /usr/bin/locale) are fixed to search data into /usr/lib/locale/locale-archive
> > when this file does exist.
> 
> localedef --no-archive should not be used in locale-gen.  "locale -a"
> searches locale-archive and /usr/lib/locale/.

No, /usr/bin/locale in glibc 2.3.1 does not look into locale-archive.
  $ ls -l /usr/lib/locale
  -rw-r--r--    1 root     root      3801120 Mar 25 18:52 locale-archive
  $ locale -a
  C
  POSIX
  $

> Moreover, all programs except for libc should not use this
> locale-archive file.

As /usr/lib/locale is managed by the locales package, could it purge
old /usr/lib/locale/<locale>/ files?  Those files are now unneeded
and confusing for users.  User defined locales should not be deleted
but placed in the archive, maybe a postinst script could put
/usr/lib/locale/<locale> in locale-archive and remove these files?

> I think this bug can be closed, is it OK?

Please fix /usr/bin/locale first (I guess this is done in 2.3.2).

Denis