Locales
NixOS allows to set the default locale as well as individual locales in the system configuration file:
# Mandatory
i18n.defaultLocale = "en_US.UTF-8";
# Optionally (BEWARE: requires a different format with the added /UTF-8)
i18n.supportedLocales = ["en_US.UTF-8/UTF-8" "es_VE.UTF-8/UTF-8"];
# Optionally
i18n.extraLocaleSettings = {
# LC_ALL = "en_US.UTF-8"; # This overrides all other LC_* settings.
LC_CTYPE = "en_US.UTF8";
LC_ADDRESS = "es_VE.UTF-8";
LC_MEASUREMENT = "es_VE.UTF-8";
LC_MESSAGES = "en_US.UTF-8";
LC_MONETARY = "es_VE.UTF-8";
LC_NAME = "es_VE.UTF-8";
LC_NUMERIC = "en_US.UTF-8";
LC_PAPER = "es_VE.UTF-8";
LC_TELEPHONE = "es_VE.UTF-8";
LC_TIME = "es_VE.UTF-8";
LC_COLLATE = "es_VE.UTF-8";
};
i18n.defaultLocale
will set the language and the character set systemwide to the desired value. Specifically, defaultLocale will define the LANG
environment variable.
In addition, with i18n.supportedLocales
, the system will also support Venezuelan Spanish. The value "all"
means that all locales supported by Glibc will be installed. A full list of supported locales can be found at https://sourceware.org/git/?p=glibc.git;a=blob;f=localedata/SUPPORTED.
And in the i18n.extraLocaleSettings
, it is possible to set the LC locales individually. This does allow fine-grained adjustments of the used locales. In the above example a mix of American English and Venezuelan Spanish is used. It is also possible to find these settings at NixOS options. Just search for i18 locale.
i18n.supportedLocales
requires a different format to i18n.extraLocaleSettings
with the added /UTF-8
. Otherwise, your locale settings will likely not work.Troubleshooting when using nix on non-NixOS linux distributions
You may need to set the environmental variable LOCALE_ARCHIVE to point to your system's locale-archive. The following can be added to your .zshenv (zsh) or .profile (bash) and applies to Debian, Red Hat, and Arch derivatives:
export LOCALE_ARCHIVE=/usr/lib/locale/locale-archive
And if that file from the local system is somehow broken:
# May require a one-time installation with:
nix profile install nixpkgs#glibcLocales
# Using nix profile
export LOCALE_ARCHIVE="$(nix profile list --json | jq '.elements[] | select(.attrPath? and (.attrPath | type == "string") and (.attrPath | endswith("glibcLocales"))) | .storePaths[0]')/lib/locale/locale-archive"
# Legacy usage with `nix-env`: May require a one-time installation with: nix-env -iA nixpkgs.glibcLocales
export LOCALE_ARCHIVE="$(nix-env --installed --no-name --out-path --query glibc-locales)/lib/locale/locale-archive"
Enable locale support in Nix shell
To support locales within a Nix shell, for example to get localised command output, you need to do something similar:
pkgs.mkShell {
# [other code omitted]
LOCALE_ARCHIVE = "${pkgs.glibcLocales}/lib/locale/locale-archive";
}