GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 685650
GStreamer should not set the locale
Last modified: 2012-11-20 11:57:35 UTC
The function init_pre() in gstreamer/gst/gst.c calls setlocale(LC_ALL, ""), which sets the locale to the values specified in the environment. This is wrong for two reasons: 1. It is absolutely not the task of a library to decide on the correct locale for a program. Some programs change the locale for various (good or bad) reasons, and libraries should respect that. Programs where GStreamer's overwriting of the locale causes bugs include Emacs [1, 2], Sublime Text [3], and Lua [4]. [1] http://debbugs.gnu.org/cgi/bugreport.cgi?bug=12392 [2] http://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=779426 [3] http://www.sublimetext.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=8543 [4] https://github.com/pavouk/lgi/issues/19 Note that setting the locale can cause problems for programs that are not even linked against GStreamer. In the case of Emacs, for example, GStreamer seems to be initialized through GTK via libcanberra. 2. Setting the locale is not thread-safe, and therefore should not be done in a library.
commit 9326124581e65c7f4dc6a729f12c1dca77d564f3 Author: Sebastian Dröge <sebastian.droege@collabora.co.uk> Date: Tue Nov 20 12:56:12 2012 +0100 gst: Don't set the locale in gst_init() The function init_pre() in gstreamer/gst/gst.c calls setlocale(LC_ALL, ""), which sets the locale to the values specified in the environment. This is wrong for two reasons: 1. It is absolutely not the task of a library to decide on the correct locale for a program. Some programs change the locale for various (good or bad) reasons, and libraries should respect that. Programs where GStreamer's overwriting of the locale causes bugs include Emacs [1, 2], Sublime Text [3], and Lua [4]. [1] http://debbugs.gnu.org/cgi/bugreport.cgi?bug=12392 [2] http://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=779426 [3] http://www.sublimetext.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=8543 [4] https://github.com/pavouk/lgi/issues/19 Note that setting the locale can cause problems for programs that are not even linked against GStreamer. In the case of Emacs, for example, GStreamer seems to be initialized through GTK via libcanberra. 2. Setting the locale is not thread-safe, and therefore should not be done in a library. https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=685650