[fpc-pascal] locale solution for unix systems

[Henry Vermaak]

2009/3/20 Bart <bartjunk64 at gmail.com>:
>>  Note that a bulky "read externally" alternative won't be enabled by default
>>  in FPC anyway, so it doesn't even alleviate the "need to include clocale"
>>  issue. The point is if in this case it is worth the trouble if most people then
>>  happily link to X or Lazarus.
>
> Personally I would like to see the formatsettings being localised by
> default (by SysUtils), since on Windows it is (Delphi compatibility)
> and I'd expect it ot be the same on all platforms.
> For this reason a "bulky read external" alternative might be useful if
> we do not want SysUtils be dependent on libc.

you can't do this automatically, since there will be a performance
penalty and you're not even sure that the locale definitions are
installed.

>
> In that case I'd opt for parsing the text-based versions, since the
> compiled ones are libc dependent (their format changes).
> Anyone who links his app to libc (like a standard Lazarus app) can the
> hapilly include clocale (because the text-based parsing might not be
> 100% accurate).

on debian (for example), the locale definitions are bundled up in the
"locales" package, which depends on glibc.  i'm willing to bet that
you won't find these definitions bundled without localedef, since
that's the only program that uses them.

henry