How to set LOCALE_ARCHIVE environment variable properly on nixos?

[ShivanshuKantPrasad]

I had some issue trying to run a program. It gave hGetContents: invalid argument error. After googling around I came acroos
the following thread.

Cabal init fails in devShell

Trying to set up a Haskell developer environment with the following flake: { inputs.nixpkgs.url = "github:nixos/nixpkgs/nixos-21.11-small"; outputs = { self, nixpkgs }: { devShell."x86_64-linux" = with import nixpkgs { system = "x86_64-linux"; }; pkgs.mkShell { buildInputs = [ haskellPackages.ghc haskellPackages.cabal-install haskellPackages.cabal2nix ]; }; }; } Get into dev shell by nix develop and run cabal update b…

Looking at the thread it seems the issue is related to the value of LOCALE_CACHE environment variable. The thread links to a manual page that provides the solution for nixpkgs on Non-NixOS platform. NixOS wiki has a page on the topic which agains only shows the solution for Non-NixOS platforms.

Looking around the options in nixos, I came across i18n.glibcLocales and tried setting i18n.glibcLocales = pkgs.glibcLocales. Unfortunately it didn’t solve the issue.

[NobbZ]

This is how I deal with it in BEAM related Dev shells.

I wouldn’t set that variable system wide though.

NobbZ/aoc_ex/-/blob/main/flake.nix#L19

[ShivanshuKantPrasad]

Thanks for the solution.

The problem was due to me trying to directly run the binary provided by the repo.
Recompiling the library locally using cabal2nix fixes the issue without the need of setting any variables.