OSX launches with wrong locale

[mikes-gh]

• VSCode Version: 1.7.2
• OS Version: OSX 10.12
  locale en-GB
  Steps to Reproduce:

1. lauch vscode from Dock or applications I get en-US dates from Date.prototype.toLocaleString();
2. launch vscode from terminal using code I get en-GB dates from Date.prototype.toLocaleString();

On Windows 7 I always get en-GB dates

[dbaeumer]

This has nothing to do with i18n.

@bpasero moving to you since this looks like a electron / node issue under Mac.

[joews]

I can't replicate with:

• VSCode Version: 1.7.2
• OS Version: OSX 10.12.1

OS Language preference set to "English". $LANG: en_GB.UTF-8

Steps:

1. Launch code from Dock.
2. Open developer tools.
3. Run in the console new Date().toLocaleString()

I see ex. "05/12/2016, 22:47:16"

Then:

4. Exit code
5. Use System Preferences > Language to change locale to United States. $LANG: en_US.UTF-8
6. Re-open code from Dock
7. Open developer tools
8. Run in the console new Date().toLocaleString()

I see ex. "12/5/2016, 10:49:09 PM"

So the OS locale is honoured and picks up changes immediately. @mikes-gh does this match what you did?

[mikes-gh]

Yes I get the same results as you.
The developer console gives correct results.

I get incorrect results from ToLocaleString() in the extension Im working on.

You could try this as a repo.

1. ext Install
2. select - git history (git log)

https://github.com/DonJayamanne/gitHistoryVSCode

Steps to get incorrect results

1. Start vscode from dock or applications
2. Open any repo.
3. Right click a file -> Git View File History
4. I get american dates in the item list (incorrect locale)

Steps to get correct results

1. Start vscode from terminal using code
2. Open any repo.
3. Right click a file -> Git View File History
4. I get British dates (correct locale)

Let me know if you can reproduce . Thanks for your help on this

[mikes-gh]

@jwhitfieldseed Did you mange to reproduce?

[joews]

@mikes-gh I'm sorry for the slow reply, I missed the notification.

I can repro with your steps. I also get the incorrect results launching with Spotlight and Alfred.

I can also repro with a fresh extension. I ran yo code and replaced the default message in extension.ts with:

vscode.window.showInformationMessage('Hello World! ' + new Date().toLocaleString());
vscode.window.showInformationMessage(`[${vscode.env.language}]`);
vscode.window.showInformationMessage(`[${process.env.LANG}]`)

Opening code from the terminal:

Hello World! 13/01/2017, 22:52:41
[en]
[en_GB.UTF-8]

Opening code from Applications, Dock etc:

Hello World! 1/13/2017, 10:53:46 PM
[en]
[undefined]

Opening code from the terminal with an explicit language, like this:

"/Applications/Visual Studio Code.app/Contents/MacOS/Electron" -AppleLanguages '(fr)' ~/code/hello

Gives me:

Hello World! 13/01/2017, 23:16:01
[fr]
[en_GB.UTF-8]

This is exactly the same output as if I change the OS language setting to French and open code from the terminal.

When I change the OS language setting to French and open code from the Dock, I get:

Hello World! 1/13/2017, 11:28:12 PM
[fr]
[undefined]

The expected output for new Date().toLocaleString() in French is "13/01/2017 à 23:26:42. (open Developer Tools in Code with the system language set to French and try it in the console).

This looks like two issues to me:

1. When code is opened in a way other than the terminal, it uses the en-US locale. It should use the system locale.
2. When code is opened from the terminal, it uses $LANG instead of the default locale.

I'm not sure if part 2 is a bug or desired behaviour.

[joews]

I can also repro with a vanilla Electron app:

1. https://github.com/electron/electron-quick-start
2. npm install npm install electron-packager
3. Add to the createWindow method of main.js:

electron.dialog.showMessageBox({  message: new Date().toLocaleString()  })

4. ./node_modules/.bin/electron-packager . --platform=darwin

Running from the terminal: (./electron-quick-start-darwin-x64/electron-quick-start.app/Contents/MacOS/electron-quick-start) alerts 13/01/2017, 23:49:05

Running from Finder alerts 1/13/2017 11:50:47.

I can't tell if this is a vanilla Electron or a packaging issue (since I don't know how to repro it without a packager). I'll raise an issue on electron-packager for now.

[bpasero]

@mikes-gh can you print what kind of environment variables you have defined? I suspect your terminal has some LC_ variables defined that are set when you run from terminal and not when you run from the Dock.

[mikes-gh]

@bpasero

TERM_PROGRAM=Apple_Terminal
SHELL=/bin/bash
TERM=xterm-256color
TMPDIR=/var/folders/l9/3f8nhyrj2ts60qr9w44q_rdh0000gn/T/
Apple_PubSub_Socket_Render=/private/tmp/com.apple.launchd.YGit9FQ6Gk/Render
TERM_PROGRAM_VERSION=388.1
TERM_SESSION_ID=05F369FB-124B-42DF-8AB2-230ED2BEE1DE
USER=MikeS
SSH_AUTH_SOCK=/private/tmp/com.apple.launchd.DlsCIBBwuW/Listeners
__CF_USER_TEXT_ENCODING=0x1F5:0x0:0x2
PATH=/Users/MikeS/.dnx/runtimes/dnx-mono.1.0.0-rc2-16441/bin:/Users/MikeS/.dnx/bin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/sbin:/usr/local/share/dotnet
PWD=/Users/MikeS
LANG=en_GB.UTF-8
XPC_FLAGS=0x0
XPC_SERVICE_NAME=0
SHLVL=1
HOME=/Users/MikeS
LOGNAME=MikeS
_=/usr/bin/env

[bpasero]

@mikes-gh you should be able to fix this by removing this from your environment:

LANG=en_GB.UTF-8

[mikes-gh]

The problem is launching from dock.
Launching from a terminal window works so actually what you suggest would break my desired behaviour.

Desired behaviour is that vscode uses computer regional settings.

Its a confirmed issue with electron

[wraith13]

I also encountered the same cause problem.
Because LANG is empty, pbcopy / pbpaste and its dependent node-copy-paste do not work correctly with Non-ASCII characters.

[bpasero]

Is this still happening?

[wraith13]

Yes, it is. ( vscode 1.18.0, macOS Sierra 10.12.6 )

[bpasero]

Is this still happening?

[wraith13]

Yes, it is. ( vscode 1.26.1, macOS High Sierra 10.13.5 )

This is my vscode extention's screenshot when
launch vscode from code command on Terminal.app. 🐕 is displayed correctly.

This is my vscode extention's screenshot when
launch vscode from dock or launchpad or spotlight.🐕 is not displayed correctly.

I can not recommend vscode to mac users because of this problem.

[wraith13]

This is still happening. ( vscode 1.27.2, macOS Mojave 10.14 ( Darwin 18.0.0 ) )

( I know it is macOS's fault. This is just a report. )

[wcass77]

I'm having an issue that I think is related to this. I changed my $SHELL with

chsh -s /usr/local/bin/bash

to use the homebrew version. The change was picked up immediately by Terminal.app when creating a new shell. VSCode continues to launch the OSX version and

echo $SHELL

produces: /bin/bash (VSCode) instead of the /usr/local/bin/bash (Terminal.app)

A workaround is to set the "terminal.integrated.shell.osx" option. This launches the right shell, but doesn't fix $SHELL, so I also added this to ~/.bash_profile:

# Fix $SHELL when using vscode:
export SHELL="/usr/local/bin/bash"

Hope people find this helpful.

Also, I think this is related to some downstream vscode-python issues with environment variables:
microsoft/vscode-python#1027
microsoft/vscode-python#1403

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