[Python-Dev] Dealing with test__locale failure on OS X before a3 (original) (raw)

Brett C. bac at OCF.Berkeley.EDU
Thu Aug 26 21:02:14 CEST 2004

test__locale has been failing on OS X for quite a while now (I bet ever since we started compiling against the CoreFoundation framework since that is where the problem exists). I would like to deal with it before a3 goes out in case we need to change something semantically.

Bug http://www.python.org./sf/1005113 has most of the details. Basically it looks like Apple locks down the locale so that it can't be change through locale.h . This means that all attempts to change the locale just fails silently. Obviously this sucks. I do have a contact at Apple who said it looks like it the function that caused this issue has been removed from the tree they are working with for Tiger, but that can obviously change and they could also have just moved the functionality to another function.

There are a few options on how to deal with this. One is to just turn off test__locale for OS X. We do this for test_locale already so skipping locale tests on OS X already has a precedent.

We can raise locale.Error on OS X for all attempts to set the locale. Problem I have with this is I don't know if this problem exists in other versions of OS X beyond 10.3 (test__locale passing for anyone on other OS X versions?).

Last option is to try to fix it so that we set the locale through CoreFoundation. I have no clue how doable this is (quick searching turned up http://developer.apple.com/documentation/CoreFoundation/Conceptual/CFLocales/index.html so it might be possible). Problem is I know I can't get it in before a3. Possibly before b1, but no guarantee. And of course this is assuming this works the way we need it to which it might not.

Personally I would like to turn off the test on OS X for now and then try to see if there is a proper way to solve this.

-Brett

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