bug#79714: env: always adds __CF_USER_TEXT_ENCODING var on macOS since v9.8

On Sat, Nov 1, 2025, at 07:47, Pádraig Brady wrote:
> On 01/11/2025 09:24, Bruno Haible via GNU coreutils Bug Reports wrote:
>> Pádraig Brady wrote:
>>> In fact only 6 commands require the localename-unsafe dependency:  date, du
>>> through show-date() (fprintftime), and
>>>    ls, pr, stat, uptime through strftime().
>>> So I'll adjust things to only link those against CoreFoundation.
>> 
>> This will have no effect in most cases.
>> 
>> The CoreFoundation dependency is needed for two purposes:
>>    - Gnulib modules such as localename, nstrftime, fprintftime,
>>    - $(LIBINTL) when built without --disable-nls.
>>      Here, it ensures that the user's settings in control panels
>>      are respected by programs that, as usual, do
>>        setlocale (LC_ALL, "");
>> 
>> Since normally, on macOS, GNU packages are built with NLS enabled,
>> the 'env' program will still be linked against CoreFoundation.
>
> Good point,
> but restricting the explicit link would help Andrew's case I think,
> since he said it was fine with v9.7.
>
> Andrew are you using homebrew or doing your own build
> with --disable-nls?
>
> thanks,
> Padraig

Hi, I am primarily building via Nixpkgs (whose derivation I also adapted to be able to build from the src tree in my attempts to bisect). The Nixpkgs derivation does have `--disable-nls` [1]. However, I can also reproduce the same issue (bad in v9.8, good in v9.7) using Homebrew’s coreutils (via the prebuilt bottles).

[1]: https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/blob/9947f42e8867f8c6a8573334256fb4eb1fe6f9e0/pkgs/tools/misc/coreutils/default.nix#L171