Snaps built from deb can't be gettext translated

Metadata

Project: snapcraft (launchpad)
Number: #1576282
Type: issue
State: open
Author: ~seb128
Labels: personal snap-desktop-issue
Created: 2016-04-28 03:32 PM UTC
Updated: 2017-07-21 09:38 AM UTC
Closed: —

Current evaluation

Feature request: snaps built from debs can't use gettext translations due to missing core locales, build-time LOCALEDIR binding, and absent langpacks. 10 years old, zero comments, no maintainer response; needs verification against modern core22/core24.

Suggested action: needs triage

Reason: The issue is ~10 years old (last activity 3328 days ago) with 0 comments and no maintainer response, only self-applied labels (personal, snap-desktop-issue). I could not confirm via tools whether modern core22/core24 and the current snapcraft desktop extensions resolve the locale/LOCALEDIR/langpack concerns, so a maintainer should verify relevance before closing rather than auto-closing on age alone.

Impact: 45 Quick Win: 9.0 Staleness: 95 Complexity: 80 Confidence: 55 Support Request: 10

Issue body

Currently it seems not possible to have working gettext translations without included a patched glibc build in your snap - the core image doesn't have locales definition that can be worked around by including locales definitions in the snap, though that's tedious, ideally snapcraft would help there - traditional desktop applications are built with calls to 'bindtextdomain ("domain", LOCALEDIR)', where LOCALDIR is defined at buildtime and so pointing to /usr there seems to be no way to redirect to another directory at runtime - desktop applications needs system library translations sometime which means langpacks need to be included in snaps

Evaluation history

Date	Model	Scores	Action	Summary
2026-09-01 07:16 AM UTC	qwen/qwen3.8-27b	Impact: 45 Quick Win: 9.0 Staleness: 95 Complexity: 80 Confidence: 55 Support Request: 10	needs triage	Feature request: snaps built from debs can't use gettext translations due to missing core locales, build-time LOCALEDIR binding, and absent langpacks. 10 years old, zero comments, no maintainer response; needs verification against modern core22/core24.
2026-07-23 11:46 AM UTC	qwen/qwen3.6-35b-a3b	Staleness: 98 Complexity: 60 Confidence: 95 Support Request: 10	close stale	Technical report on gettext translation failures in snaps built from deb packages due to missing locales, hardcoded build paths, and absent langpacks. Inactive for ~9 years.
2026-07-22 12:17 PM UTC	qwen/qwen3.6-35b-a3b	Staleness: 98 Complexity: 80 Confidence: 90 Support Request: 15	close stale	Snapcraft-built deb snaps lack gettext translation support due to missing locales in core images, hardcoded LOCALEDIR paths, and absent system langpacks. Unaddressed for over 9 years.
2026-07-09 05:41 PM UTC	qwen3.6-35b-a3b-mtp-q6	Staleness: 98 Complexity: 70 Confidence: 90 Support Request: 10	close stale	Reports gettext translation failures in snaps built from deb packages due to missing locales in the core image and hardcoded build-time paths. Issue is inactive for nearly a decade with no maintainer response.
2026-06-20 02:07 PM UTC	qwen3.6-35b-a3b-mtp-q6	Staleness: 98 Complexity: 45 Confidence: 90 Support Request: 15	close stale	Snaps built from debs lack working gettext translations due to missing core locales, hardcoded /usr paths, and absent langpacks. Needs snapcraft support. Open, unassigned, zero comments, inactive for years, requires triage.

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