[kloptops]

…ookups don't depend on the locale

pugwash.lang set LANG (or LC_ALL) to the bare language, "ru_RU", "en_US". Where the locale exists, as on dArkOS (a full Debian with every locale), a bare name is a legacy codeset: ISO-8859-5 for ru_RU, GB2312 for zh_CN, Latin-1 for en_US. Every program PortMaster starts inherited it. Found by the PortMaster Test Suite on an RG353V with dArkOS 08282026, and checked there with harbourmaster:

• df printed "Файловая система" in ISO-8859-5 (0xC4 first), get_path_fs() failed to decode it, and every port install failed (Russian, Ukrainian, Chinese, Japanese, Korean users).
• gamelist.xml was written with open()'s locale default: under en_US (Latin-1) a "’" in the list made every update fail and roll back, and "é" went out as Latin-1 in a file that declares utf-8.
• The theme server's renderers started with a Latin-1 filename encoding; looking up the button text "Zurück" as a file gave EPERM on exFAT, which Path.is_file() lets through, and the render crashed.

So:

• LANG, LC_ALL and LC_MESSAGES get ".UTF-8" (LANGUAGE, a gettext list, keeps the bare language); CURRENT_LANG is still the language.
• get_path_fs() runs df with LC_ALL=C, decodes leniently, and gives None when df can't be run (a CFW without df: installs go on).
• gamelist.xml, gameinfo.xml, muOS's description .txt and TrimUI's config.json are written as UTF-8.
• ResourceManager.find() treats a name the filesystem refuses as not found.

Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01NxABmR1rUUgi4iicVLZchY