Re: [PATCH] Make sure the diff machinery outputs "\ No newline ..." in english

From: Fredrik Kuivinen <freku045@student.liu.se>
Date: Sep 5, 2005, 06:01 UTC
Message-ID: <20050905060149.GB1875@c165.ib.student.liu.se>
In-Reply-To: <7vd5nohdp3.fsf@assigned-by-dhcp.cox.net>

On Sun, Sep 04, 2005 at 11:48:08AM -0700, Junio C Hamano wrote:

Show 13 quoted lines

> Fredrik Kuivinen <freku045@student.liu.se> writes:
> 
> > In non-english locales diff(1) do sometimes output "\ No newline at end of
> > file" in some other language. Set LC_ALL to C before execing diff to avoid
> > this behaviour.
> >
> > Signed-off-by: Fredrik Kuivinen <freku045@student.liu.se>
> 
> I was thinking about this when I was examining your other patch.
> 
> What else, other than the incomplete line marker (and timestamp
> output it uses by default, which we disable by passing explicit
> -L flags), are affected by locale in diff output?

After a quick look through the diff source I didn't find anything else. It's quite possible that I haved missed something though. Most of the translated messages are related to error reporting, which I guess might be nice to have in the user specified language.

Show 11 quoted lines

> Especially, if the diff output is more readable for human
> consumers (i.e. reviewers) without making it harder to use to
> machine consumers (i.e. patch or git-apply) when generated under
> a locale that is 'native' to the data, this patch robs from
> users the possibility of doing so.
> 
> IOW, in a Swedes-only project that tracks a document in Swedish,
> it _might_ be friendlier and more useful to the users if allowed
> generating diffs under sv_SE locale, as long as such a diff does
> not make the processing by patch and git-apply more difficult
> (which your other patch already solved for git-apply).

I agree that it's kind of evil to remove the option of generating the output in some other language.

Another possibility is to set LC_MESSAGES to C instead. If we go this way the user can override it by setting LC_ALL. The difference is that in most configurations the user has to make an active choice to get the 'native' language output and english will be the default.

- Fredrik