login.conf --> UTF-8

[Steve Wills]

On Wed, Apr 02, 2014 at 03:56:35PM -0700, Sean Bruno wrote:
> On Wed, 2014-04-02 at 18:06 -0400, Garrett Wollman wrote:
> > In article <1396457629.2280.2.camel at powernoodle.corp.yahoo.com>,
> > sbruno at freebsd.org writes:
> > 
> > >I'd like to make this change to login.conf for default installs.
> > >
> > >This removes some amount of hackery in the ports system that is working
> > >around our lack of UTF-8 in the base.
> > 
> > I'm not sure what the connection is here.  Surely the ports system
> > runs with the locale of the user running "make" (which in my case is
> > going to be "C").  Any port that requires a specific locale to build
> > properly needs to be setting that locale explicitly.
> > 

You'd think so, but that's not what's happening. What's happening is the
software builds as long as the locale isn't C. Hence, ugly hacks like this:

http://svnweb.freebsd.org/ports/head/Mk/bsd.ruby.mk?annotate=348863#l257

Why? Because the people writing it have never encountered a system where LANG
isn't set or is set to C. Yes, it's a bug in their software. No, they never
have and never will encounter it. Because every other operating system sets
LANG to whatever the user specifies. And so they have no interest in fixing it,
because neither they nor any one they know will ever encounter it, and even if
you report it to them they will tell you it's a bug in your system for not
having LANG specified. And I have no interest in patching it hundreds of
times.

And this is just one example. There are others, I think, that aren't ruby
related at all.

> > 
> 
> I have been informed by folks that this change I suggest would help in
> the case of ports having to declare UTF-8 support explicitly or
> something. I'm hand-wavy on the details and ignorant of the hacks in
> place.  I only know that I've been *told* this.

I think we should join the club of asking the user, but that's more work and
until then having a reasonable default and having people change it seems sane.

Steve