Home → Questions →

Intentional locale difference between Ubuntu and Ubuntu18 images?

• Edit

markfinal

Oct 11, 2018 @ 08:56 AM

Hello,

I've just started testing out the Ubuntu images available on appveyor. Thank you for making those available.

I've noticed one difference, in the current locale between Ubuntu and Ubuntu18 images, and have inspected them using the 'locale' and 'locale -a' commands.

I see this on Ubuntu (16):
locale
LANG=en_US.UTF-8
LANGUAGE=
LC_CTYPE="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_NUMERIC="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_TIME="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_COLLATE="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_MONETARY="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_MESSAGES="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_PAPER="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_NAME="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_ADDRESS="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_TELEPHONE="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_MEASUREMENT="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_IDENTIFICATION="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_ALL=
locale -a
C
C.UTF-8
en_US.utf8
POSIX

Ubuntu 18
locale
LANG=C.UTF-8
LANGUAGE=
LC_CTYPE="C.UTF-8"
LC_NUMERIC="C.UTF-8"
LC_TIME="C.UTF-8"
LC_COLLATE="C.UTF-8"
LC_MONETARY="C.UTF-8"
LC_MESSAGES="C.UTF-8"
LC_PAPER="C.UTF-8"
LC_NAME="C.UTF-8"
LC_ADDRESS="C.UTF-8"
LC_TELEPHONE="C.UTF-8"
LC_MEASUREMENT="C.UTF-8"
LC_IDENTIFICATION="C.UTF-8"
LC_ALL=
locale -a
C
C.UTF-8
POSIX
en_US.utf8

In summary, Ubuntu16 has LANG=en_US.UTF-8, while Ubuntu18 has LANG=C.UTF-8, but both have the same set of locales installed.

I have Ubuntu 16 and 18 VMs locally, and both have defaulted to en_US.utf-8, so I don't believe that this is a change in standard Ubuntu 18 installs.
Was it an intentional change in appveyor images?

Thanks,
Mark

1. 1 Posted by Wasa Pleshakov on Oct 11, 2018 @ 09:01 PM

   

   Both Ubuntu 16 and Ubuntu 18 images are based on Ubuntu images from Google Cloud Platform: Ubuntu 16.04 LTS and Ubuntu 18.04 LTS respectively. Locale was configured in those base images.
   If you have account in GCE (google cloud platform) you may create VM instances from Ubuntu 16.04 LTS and Ubuntu 18.04 LTS images and find the same difference in locale.

   Is it inconvenient for you? What locale would be better for our clients on your opinion?

   • Edit

2. 2 Posted by markfinal on Oct 12, 2018 @ 07:04 AM

   

   Hi,

   In all fairness, it was actually useful as a non-standard locale highlighted a bug in some string comparisons in my code.

   Since I've now corrected that, it's not inconvenient at all. But it may trip someone else up.

   I was simply surprised that there was a difference between the two Ubuntu images, and I couldn't find any documentation on the appveyor site to indicate that it was intentionally different.

   If anything, I wouldn't change the locale (since it does find bugs), but I would highly recommend making it clear in documentation.

   Thanks,
   Mark

   • Edit

3. Support Staff 3 Posted by Owen McDonnell on Oct 14, 2018 @ 06:01 AM

   

   Hi Mark,

   If i may interject, our website is open source and pull requests are always welcome!

   • Edit

4. Owen McDonnell closed this discussion on Oct 14, 2018 @ 06:01 AM.

5. markfinal re-opened this discussion on Oct 14, 2018 @ 07:08 AM

6. 4 Posted by markfinal on Oct 14, 2018 @ 07:08 AM

   

   Hi,

   So it is! I hadn't realised that.

   I'll make a PR with my suggestion.

   Thanks,
   Mark

   • Edit

7. Owen McDonnell closed this discussion on Oct 14, 2018 @ 07:17 AM.

8. Wasa Pleshakov re-opened this discussion on Nov 16, 2018 @ 03:34 PM

9. 5 Posted by Wasa Pleshakov on Nov 16, 2018 @ 03:34 PM

   

   Mark,
   In new Ubuntu images release we made same locale C.UTF-8 in both Ubuntu16 and Ubuntu18.

   • Edit

10. 6 Posted by markfinal on Nov 16, 2018 @ 06:48 PM

    

    Ah thanks, great to see consistency.

    Cheers,
    Mark

    • Edit

11. Wasa Pleshakov closed this discussion on Nov 17, 2018 @ 01:50 PM.