[Development] RFC: Defaulting to or enforcing UTF-8 locales on Unix systems

[André Pönitz]

On Sat, Nov 02, 2019 at 06:16:36PM +0100, Kevin Kofler wrote:
> A true runtime option actually belongs in an environment variable, not in a 
> method that has to be called by the compiled code. (In fact, that's what I 
> would have expected your proposed QT_NO_OVERRIDE_LC_CTYPE to be, but 
> apparently you were thinking of a preprocessor define.)
> 
> Whether to propagate the locale to child processes is really a decision that 
> can and should be left to the user at runtime rather than compiling it 
> either into the application (as in André's proposal) or even into Qt itself 
> (as in your proposal).

I am all for not propagating Qt's UTF-8 choice to child processes at all.

Having that as opt-in on some level was an attempt to appease people who
think that's a good idea.

A configure option for Qt itself does not help as it keeps the question open
what the default setup will be. And given the circumstances that would
be "propagation".

Compiled opt-in per-application at least shifts the blame from Qt to the
application vendor, compiled opt-in per-process environment leaves the blame
still with the application vendor, but actually provides the possibility
to do the right thing when it is known that the child actually _needs_ it.

On the other hand, in those circumstances, this can already be done now
by normal fiddling with the child process environment.

Andre'