On Fri, 10 Jul 2026 09:06:03 -0400 Dmitry Goncharov <[email protected]> wrote:
> On Fri, Jul 10, 2026 at 3:07â¯AM Frank Heckenbach > <[email protected]> wrote: > > > > When setting the locale via LC_MESSAGES or LC_ALL etc., this affects > > both make's own messages such as "Entering directory" and those from > > commands run by it (here: "total" from ls), e.g.: > ... > > Is there a way to change only one of them? > > I want make's messages always in English > > [dgonchar@dgonchar-7cefc2 test]# cat makefile > export LC_MESSAGES=de_DE > test:; @ls -l > [dgonchar@dgonchar-7cefc2 test]# make -C . > make: Entering directory '/root/gmake/test' > insgesamt 4 > -rw-r--r-- 1 dgonchar root 40 Jul 10 13:04 makefile > make: Leaving directory '/root/gmake/test' > [dgonchar@dgonchar-7cefc2 test]# In addition to Dmitrys excellent answer, if you do not want to modify the Makefile and still want to be able to choose language with LC_MESSAGES when running make... If you really want makes messages to _allways_ be in enghlish no matter what, then you can remove all those make.mo files from your system. When no make.mo file is found in a directory matching your choosen locale make will fall back to english. regards Henrik
