Bug#998059: sphinx: LANGUAGE environment variable inconsistently affects output of objects.inv
Followup-For: Bug #998059 Control: forwarded -1 https://github.com/sphinx-doc/sphinx/pull/10067 Control: close -1 This variance in Sphinx project 'objects.inv' output files was resolved by a change within Sphinx that added a default config language code. That change stabilized the output of gettext-based translation resource loading, removing variance based on the build host's LANGUAGE environment variable.
Bug#998059: sphinx: LANGUAGE environment variable inconsistently affects output of objects.inv
Package: python3-sphinx Followup-For: Bug #998059 X-Debbugs-Cc: la...@debian.org Control: found -1 4.5.0 Control: notfound -1 5.0.0 Dear Maintainer, My updated understanding is that this issue was fixed[1] in version 5.0.0 of Sphinx. I've documented[2] the process I followed using 'git bisect' to determine when the fix was introduced (between versions 4.5.0 and 5.0.0 of sphinx). Since my previous comment, the (I now believe, incorrect) changeset that I'd forwarded to resolve the problem in more recent Sphinx versions was accepted, so I've offered an explanation and revert changeset that I hope may be acceptable before the upcoming 6.2.0 release. Although it could be time-consuming to understand and verify my findings, if someone has time to do that then I'd be grateful (I've confused myself a few times while working on this bug, and I don't trust my findings enough yet to close it). Thank you, James [1] - https://github.com/sphinx-doc/sphinx/commit/e4e58a4f2791e528cdaa861b96636a1e37a558ba [2] - https://github.com/sphinx-doc/sphinx/issues/9778#issuecomment-1501172176
Bug#998059: sphinx: LANGUAGE environment variable inconsistently affects output of objects.inv
Source: sphinx Version: 3.2.1-2 Followup-For: Bug #998059 X-Debbugs-Cc: j...@jp-hosting.net After taking another look at this issue a couple of weeks ago, and some further discussion with Chris on the relevant GitHub issue, it seemed like a better approach (instead of disabling objects.inv output altogether, or configuring environment variables on a per-package basis) is to set a neutral/null translation locale during reproducible builds for sphinx. A pull request to do that has been opened/forwarded upstream.
Bug#998059: sphinx: LANGUAGE environment variable inconsistently affects output of objects.inv
Source: sphinx Followup-For: Bug #998059 X-Debbugs-Cc: debian-pyt...@lists.debian.org (context: cross-posting based on an idea[1] that has been discussed upstream in sphinx's GitHub repository about how to resolve locale-based build variance) The SPHINXOPTS[2] environment variable provides a way to selectively override defined environment variables (such as LANGUAGE) in a way that should only affect sphinx (limiting the effects on unrelated build steps). For example: SPHINXOPTS='-D LANGUAGE="en_US.UTF-8"' That would allow the objects.inv file to be built in a fixed language on a per-package basis. It doesn't seem ideal to artificially limit documentation localization for affected packages, but could allow many of the affected packages to pass diffoscope reproducibility testing. Alternatives explored: I wasn't able to identify a straightforward, supported way to disable creation of the objects.inv file, nor is it currently possible to invoke a multi-locale HTML sphinx build (an approach that might permit output of monolithic documentation outputs that wouldn't vary based on build environment locale). I'll file a feature request for the former; the latter is tracked by an existing request[3]. [1] - https://github.com/sphinx-doc/sphinx/issues/9778#issuecomment-1264065231 [2] - https://github.com/sphinx-doc/sphinx/blob/v4.5.0/doc/man/sphinx-build.rst#environment-variables [3] - https://github.com/sphinx-doc/sphinx/issues/788
