Segfault running master on NetBSD #17379

While testing 17270 I noticed that master (bdda137878904e9401a84e308ac74c93c2ef87c1) does not run on NetBSD. I assume this started after #17085 changed the fallback locale from C to C.UTF-8. There doesn't seem to be a C.UTF-8 locale on NetBSD.

src/bitcoind
terminate called after throwing an instance of 'std::runtime_error'
  what():  locale::facet::_S_create_c_locale name not valid
Abort trap (core dumped)

LC_ALL=C src/bitcoind works, LC_ALL=en_US.UTF-8 src/bitcoind does not.

locale
LANG=""
LC_CTYPE="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_COLLATE="C"
LC_TIME="C"
LC_NUMERIC="C"
LC_MONETARY="C"
LC_MESSAGES="C"
LC_ALL=""

This is an eternal source of problems. I wonder if we can get rid of all locale dependency at some point and just ignore the locale. Probably not as long as we use boost::filesystem … :cry:

@laanwj

Setting aside the boost::filesystem the list of places where we're using locale dependent operations is quite short:

https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/blob/e204dc11b562c2cf31d320774a4dcbe49f3b6468/test/lint/lint-locale-dependence.sh#L5-L20

Perhaps a "good first issue" could be created to tackle the list above? Some of them are really low hanging fruits suitable for new contributors.

I'm all for replacing those, but none of those functions crashes on having a wrong locale configured, that's very much a boost thing.

FYI, after progress on #21485, bitcoind on SmartOS (Illumos) suffers from the same issue.

terminate called after throwing an instance of 'std::runtime_error'
  what():  locale::facet::_S_create_c_locale name not valid
Abort (core dumped)

@fanquake has been working on replacing boost::filesystem, which should get rid of this issue entirely, maybe help testing #20744.

@fanquake do you need help testing those changes on SmartOS? I can try to compile your branch.