Bug#274289: locales: postinst should not overwrite settings in /etc/environment

[barbier@linuxfr.org (Denis Barbier)]

On Sat, Oct 02, 2004 at 10:17:46AM +0900, GOTO Masanori wrote:
> At Fri, 1 Oct 2004 20:56:46 +0200,
> Denis Barbier wrote:
> > > "None" means "I don't want to set LANG variable to /etc/environment".
> > >
> > > In this case, I think adding "Don't touch /etc/environment" entry is
> > > appropriate like "Don't touch keymap" in console related package (I
> > > forgot the actual package name, but I guess you know it).  In
> > > addition, "None" is vague name - I propose it as "Don't set LANG" and
> > > so on.
> > 
> > No, locales.config parses this file in order to catch user's settings.
> > I can see two reasons why this could fail:
> >   a. locales.config is unable to parse /etc/environment.
> 
> It's no problem.  locales.config just parses /etc/environment even if
> there's unknown LANG settings.

It fails if for instance there are spaces before LANG=

[...]
> >   b. The selected locale is not listed in SUPPORTED.
> > About (a), the format of /etc/environment is mostly unspecified, so
> > it is not worth trying to fix this parsing, the right solution is to
> > let the locales package handle its own configuration file.
> 
> I would like to know: why can console-data have "Don't touch keymap",
> but can't locales have "Don't touch /etc/environment"?

The difference is that locales interact with a configuration file.

This option was there months ago (named then "Leave alone") and
  http://lists.debian.org/debian-glibc/2003/04/msg00270.html
was about its removal (among other things).

> > About (b), I am not sure how to best fix it, but this bugreport should
> > then be retitled.
> 
> I think there're two reasons to improve this area:
> 
>   (1) Some locales have alias name because of historical reason.  For
>       example, ja_JP.EUC-JP is listed in SUPPORTED, but I prefer to
>       use ja_JP.eucJP.  eucJP is alias of EUC-JP.
> 
>   (2) If we want to use new locale for local experiment, we have no
>       idea to keep such locale in /etc/environment.  It's not enough
>       reason for users, though.
> 
> So I think "Don't touch /etc/environment" is good idea to introduce it.

I disagree.  Another solution is to add the current value found in
/etc/environment to the list of choices so that it can be selected,
the problem then is that this locale may not exist.

Denis