i18n.defaultLocale is not respected in many programs

[turion]

Issue description

Here is an incomplete list of programs that don't respect the setting i18n.defaultLocale:

• Thunderbird
• Firefox
• konsole

For up-to-date Thunderbird and Firefox there is no easy way to switch the locale, so this is quite a blocker.

Steps to reproduce

• Set i18n.defaultLocale = "de_DE.UTF-8"; in the main config, switch to that config
• nix-env -iA nixos.thunderbird
• thunderbird
• All time stamps are displayed in AM/PM

Technical details

• system: "x86_64-linux"
• host os: Linux 4.14.68, NixOS, 19.03pre151837.ca2ba44cab4 (Koi)
• multi-user?: yes
• sandbox: yes
• version: nix-env (Nix) 2.1
• channels(root): "nixos-19.03pre151837.ca2ba44cab4"
• nixpkgs: /nix/var/nix/profiles/per-user/root/channels/nixos

[jappeace]

There is a build flag to build firefox with a locale: https://firefox-source-docs.mozilla.org/build/buildsystem/locales.html

I think it's just a matter of adding it to the configure flags: https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/blob/master/pkgs/applications/networking/browsers/firefox/common.nix#L165

Although I don't know which path they refer to in the guide.

[Yarny0]

@turion
I've been wrestling with Mozilla locale settings the last weeks .. maybe my observations can help you:
Firefox and Thunderbird learned a new pref recently (in about:prefs or in prefs.js file, as part of this Quantum initiative I guess): intl.locale.requested. It seems to default to "en-US". If it is changed to an empty string, Firefox/Thunderbird look for the LANG variable and use its value. However, this requires that the appropriate language pack addon is installed.

[turion]

@Yarny0 that's interesting, especially since most language pack addons are deprecated since those newer Firefox versions! I have no idea how this is supposed to work.

[liff]

FWIW, setting intl.locale.requested="" is what Arch and Ubuntu do.

[stale]

Thank you for your contributions.

This has been automatically marked as stale because it has had no activity for 180 days.

If this is still important to you, we ask that you leave a comment below. Your comment can be as simple as "still important to me". This lets people see that at least one person still cares about this. Someone will have to do this at most twice a year if there is no other activity.

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[turion]

I think this is still open.

CC Firefox maintainers: @eelco @andir
CC Thunderbird maintainers: @eelco @lovesegfault @pierron
CC Konsole maintainers: @ttuegel (oops, and myself.)

[stale]

I marked this as stale due to inactivity. → More info

[turion]

I believe this is still open?

[stale]

I marked this as stale due to inactivity. → More info

[aviallon]

Still a bug for me.