summaryrefslogtreecommitdiff
path: root/doc/guix.texi
diff options
context:
space:
mode:
authorLudovic Courtès <ludo@gnu.org>2015-10-01 21:32:50 +0200
committerLudovic Courtès <ludo@gnu.org>2015-10-03 17:55:13 +0200
commitfbb909ac7e947ebc8aea2c2efca7df3a78dfc3c4 (patch)
tree9544c52c5284af05bae138a42dd98f53768d2ef2 /doc/guix.texi
parent1668dfcd37174af13636a85c80df2f833e867387 (diff)
gnu: glibc: Honor 'GUIX_LOCPATH'.
* gnu/packages/patches/glibc-guix-locpath.patch: New file. * gnu-system.am (dist_patch_DATA): Add it. * gnu/packages/base.scm (glibc)[source]: Use it. [native-search-paths]: Use 'GUIX_LOCPATH' instead of 'LOCPATH'. * doc/guix.texi (Application Setup): Introduce the term "foreign distro". Document 'GUIX_LOCPATH'.
Diffstat (limited to 'doc/guix.texi')
-rw-r--r--doc/guix.texi26
1 files changed, 19 insertions, 7 deletions
diff --git a/doc/guix.texi b/doc/guix.texi
index 68ee451efc..a1746d44d1 100644
--- a/doc/guix.texi
+++ b/doc/guix.texi
@@ -933,24 +933,24 @@ daemons on the same machine.
@node Application Setup
@section Application Setup
-When using Guix on top of GNU/Linux distribution other than GuixSD, a
-few additional steps are needed to get everything in place. Here are
-some of them.
+When using Guix on top of GNU/Linux distribution other than GuixSD---a
+so-called @dfn{foreign distro}---a few additional steps are needed to
+get everything in place. Here are some of them.
@subsection Locales
@anchor{locales-and-locpath}
@cindex locales, when not on GuixSD
@vindex LOCPATH
+@vindex GUIX_LOCPATH
Packages installed @i{via} Guix will not use the host system's locale
data. Instead, you must first install one of the locale packages
-available with Guix and then define the @code{LOCPATH} environment
-variable (@pxref{Locale Names, @code{LOCPATH},, libc, The GNU C Library
-Reference Manual}):
+available with Guix and then define the @code{GUIX_LOCPATH} environment
+variable:
@example
$ guix package -i glibc-locales
-$ export LOCPATH=$HOME/.guix-profile/lib/locale
+$ export GUIX_LOCPATH=$HOME/.guix-profile/lib/locale
@end example
Note that the @code{glibc-locales} package contains data for all the
@@ -958,6 +958,18 @@ locales supported by the GNU@tie{}libc and weighs in at around
110@tie{}MiB. Alternately, the @code{glibc-utf8-locales} is smaller but
limited to a few UTF-8 locales.
+The @code{GUIX_LOCPATH} variable plays the exact same role as
+@code{LOCPATH} (@pxref{Locale Names, @code{LOCPATH},, libc, The GNU C
+Library Reference Manual}). However, since it is honored only by Guix's
+libc, and not by the libc provided by foreign distros, using
+@code{GUIX_LOCPATH} allows you to make sure the the foreign distro's
+programs will not end up loading incompatible locale data. This is
+important because the locale data format used by different libc versions
+may be incompatible.
+
+When both @code{GUIX_LOCPATH} and @code{LOCPATH} are defined, the latter
+takes precedence.
+
@subsection X11 Fonts
The majority of graphical applications use Fontconfig to locate and