Re: initdb "Fails to initialize lc_time" (using 7.3.1)

Tom Lane writes:

> The trigger for this problem is that you have LANG = en_US in your
> environment, but it seems that OS X doesn't really support that setting
> fully. At least setlocale() rejects it for the MONETARY, NUMERIC, and
> TIME categories.

We should probably catch this during initdb. Maybe I'll get to rewriting
it in C and then we can share the routines.

> Also, although initdb --no-locale gets around the startup failure, you
> still see all the "Failed to initialize" chatter. This is because
> initdb massages its own variables but doesn't unset LANG when you use
> that option. Peter, why did you set up initdb's locale switches that
> way? Why don't you have them set/unset the standard environment
> variable names, so that the effects are actually seen by programs called
> by initdb?

Generally, because there's no reason to, because we're only interested in
collate and ctype.

Specifically, if my environment is set to locale A and I initialize a
cluster with locale B, I still want the possible error messages of
"postgres -boot" to come out in locale A.

--
Peter Eisentraut peter_e(at)gmx(dot)net