It definitely works with LANG=en_US.UTF-8 (and other en country variants).
It definitely doesn't**work in the zh_CN locale, as was reported recently.
The reason evidently is a dependency in the build on the output format
of the date command.
Which other locales it works in, I don't know. So, I guess it makes
sense to standardize
on a particular setting. The idea of setting it internally within the
build to "C" sounds attractive
because forcing people to use such an outdated compatibility mode locale
seems wrong. I'm not sure how easy it is to set environment variables in
make is
(as opposed to reading/using them ). I wonder why this wasn't done before...
In any case, this is a general build issue rather than being Mac specific.
By the way, I did file a bug on the LANG breakage (7151897)
Thanks
Michael.
On 15/03/12 18:57, Stuart Marks wrote:
I agree, there's a larger question about LANG that needs to be asked
here.
From a pragmatic point of view, I ran into a build issue that boiled
down to the absence of LANG in my environment in certain cases (ssh vs
VNC). README-builds.html recommends setting LANG=C for OpenSolaris and
all the Linux-flavored build environments. So, it makes sense for
LANG=C to go into the Mac build instructions as well.
(README-builds.html should get updated too.) Unlike on Linux, the
consequences of LANG being unset on Mac are that the build breaks, so
Michael has added this check in the Makefile to prevent this obvious
error. I believe he was also going to file a bug on the Mac build
breaking when LANG is unset.
Now, the larger questions are, what are the valid values of LANG, and
if all the Unix-flavored build instructions recommend setting LANG=C,
why not just have the makefiles or build scripts set this value and be
done with it?
I don't know, and I don't have the expertise in the build system to
know how other LANG settings would affect the build. Perhaps somebody
else on build-dev knows. Meanwhile, we're patching things up this way,
even though it makes things a bit messier.
s'marks
On 3/15/12 10:59 AM, Mike Swingler wrote:
What other values are valid? UTF8? Why would a builder ever want to
change the lang?
I think the build script should define it and use it for it's own
private purposes (allowing it to be overridden) if there is no
compelling reason for an ordinary user to know/care what lang is. I'd
prefer not to clutter up the build instructions unless you _really_
have to pass some value that is machine-specific (like the location
of the bootstrap JDK). Even then, on the Mac, I think the build
scripts should call /usr/libexec/java_home -v 1.7+ on their own, and
only balk if there is not sufficient OpenJDK installed.
Regards,
Mike Swingler
Apple Inc.
On Mar 15, 2012, at 9:43 AM, Stuart Marks wrote:
Looks good to me too. I've updated the Mac build instructions on the
wiki to state that LANG should be set.
s'marks
On 3/15/12 9:30 AM, Kelly O'Hair wrote:
Looks fine to me.
-kto
On Mar 15, 2012, at 9:18 AM, Michael McMahon wrote:
Can I get the following jdk8 change reviewed please?
It is a simple sanity check on Mac OS X to ensure that
LANG is set in the environment. Currently, the build fails
if it's not set, but the failure is quite obscure.
http://cr.openjdk.java.net/~michaelm/7151898/webrev.1/
Thanks
Michael.
