bug#27244: Should not $GUIX_LOCPATH belong to ‘glibc-locales’ rather than ‘glibc’?

[Ludovic Courtès]

Hi Dmitry,

Dmitry Alexandrov <address@hidden> skribis:

> As of now [0] a search path ‘GUIX_LOCPATH’ is exported when ‘glibc’
> package, which does not comprise any locales, is installed.  I guess,
> it should belong to ‘glibc-locales’ and ‘glibc-utf8-locales’ instead.

The idea of search path specifications like ‘GUIX_LOCPATH’ is that the
package that honors them defines them.

For example, Python defines ‘PYTHONPATH’, Guile defines
‘GUILE_LOAD_PATH’, and so on.

In this case, ‘GUIX_LOCPATH’ is honored by glibc, so glibc defines it.

If instead ‘glibc-utf8-locales’ defined it, then you’d immediately get
the recommendation about setting ‘GUIX_LOCPATH’, which I guess is what
you’d like to see.  However, every locale-providing package would need
to define it, which is not great.

On a related note, see this issue about indirect search path
specifications: <https://bugs.gnu.org/22138>.

Does it make sense?

Thanks for your message,
Ludo’.