Hi Eli, > LC_MESSAGES means nothing on MS-Windows, so why does Gnulib need to > "fix" something that is not supported by the runtime library?
On native Windows, LC_MESSAGES is indeed not defined by the runtime library, but by Gnulib: it's defined in gnulib's <locale.h> replacement [1] and supported by gnulib's 'setlocale' module. Why do we do this? 1. Because LC_MESSAGES is defined by POSIX, and one of Gnulib's goals is to emulate POSIX APIs, as far as it makes sense. 2. Because LC_MESSAGES is essential for GNU gettext. > Applications that want to be portable to MinGW and use LC_MESSAGES > should make sure the related code is either ifdef'ed out on MS-Windows > or does something reasonable "by other means". ... where "other means" include using Gnulib's 'locale' and 'setlocale' modules. > Proliferating the illusion that LC_MESSAGES are supported on > MS-Windows is IMO not a good idea. Why not? It's a good "illusion". It's an "illusion" that allows GNU gettext to work on native Windows. This kind of "illusion" is the basis of the POSIX emulation part of Gnulib. [2] > > 2018-11-23 Bruno Haible <br...@clisp.org> > > > > localename: Fix gettext test failures on mingw. > > * lib/localename.c (gl_locale_name_posix): Convert the result of > > gl_locale_name_environ to XPG syntax. > > I no longer remember the details, but wouldn't such conversion get in > the way of calling 'setlocale'? The MS-Windows runtime library > implementation doesn't understand the XPG syntax, AFAIR, so it will > generally fail. Correct. Programs should not call 'setlocale' with the result of 'gl_locale_name_posix'. This follows from the documentation of 'gl_locale_name_posix' in localename.h. Programs that call 'setlocale' and want to consider locale names given by environment variables usually do so by calling setlocale (LC_something, ""); Bruno [1] https://www.gnu.org/software/gnulib/manual/html_node/locale_002eh.html [2] https://www.gnu.org/software/gnulib/manual/html_node/Various-Kinds-of-Modules.html#Support-for-ISO-C-or-POSIX-functions_002e
