Jim Gifford wrote:
With the recent thread in Cross-LFS and LFS-dev lists, I wanted to pose an idea. Couldn't we add the utf-8 pages to an appendix and refer to them via notes in the builds, like we currently do with Cracklib in Shadow, the only difference is that we would be refering to an appendix in the book. Is this acceptable to everyone.
I think consensus is that this isn't a good idea. LFS policy has always been that the book should be completely linear and there should be no optional build stages in order to keep the instructions as simple as possible. Admittedly, shadow recently got a *link* to an optional set of instructions for compiling with cracklib support for security reasons, but I don't think that's in the same league as the current proposal.
IMO, the lack of UTF-8 support has been a major feautre deficiency of the book for too long. Unfortunately it's a complex issue, and one which I didn't (and still don't) feel qualified to fix personally. As we now have community members a) wanting the feature b) willing to provide patches to fix the book and c) willing to test those fixes, now is the ideal time to get this feature in the book.
I do understand folks concerns regarding the addition of man-db and Berkeley DB, but its similar to when we pushed for dynamic device/module handling - it's the only workable solution available at the moment (as far as I am aware). Just like udev is starting to mature, I can see the likes of groff and man improving to an extent where man-db and bdb may no longer be required (and thanks to Jim for getting a status report from upstream on their plans). For the time being though, I'm happy for the current instructions to stay and for packages to be built so they are UTF-8 compatible. Whether or not folks use a UTF-8 locale is entirely up to them and should be easily configured by their shell's profile settings, etc.
I'd obviously prefer CLFS to follow suit - cross-building and UTF-8 are (or should be) entirely orthogonal concepts. If our adding support for UTF-8 breaks the CLFS build, then we should work together to see if an amicable solution is possible.
Regards, Matt. -- http://linuxfromscratch.org/mailman/listinfo/lfs-dev FAQ: http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/faq/ Unsubscribe: See the above information page
