Issue with "locale" in "Command log"

[Fooughhy]

Describe the bug
lazygit is not using the default shell in the "Command log". It seems to always use bash specifically in this window, but I have been unable to test this further as I don't want to remove the bash binary. And it is changing the locale to 'en_US.UTF-8', which I do not have installed.

To Reproduce
Steps to reproduce the behavior:

1. Configure default shell to not be bash. Remove 'en_US.UTF-8' from locales.
2. Open lazygit, and view "Command log" window.
3. Should see log regarding locale.

Expected behavior
Either lazygit should use the default shell always, or it should allow for configuring the locale used by bash.

Screenshots
I get this warning continuously in the lazygit "Command log" window:

Default shell (zsh):

grep whoami /etc/passwd
fough:x:1000:1000:,,,:/home/fough:/usr/bin/zsh

Version info:
lazygit: commit=bc4b50f817a0b82393a872f96b04a77f769ae929, build date=2025-07-05T02:32:23Z, build source=binaryRelease, version=0.53.0, os=linux, arch=arm64, git version=2.39.5
git: git version 2.39.5

[stefanhaller]

For some of the git commands that lazygit uses, it needs to force the language to english because it parses git's output and needs to react to certain things. Arguably it shouldn't do this by setting LC_ALL, but only by setting LC_MESSAGES, but I don't think this would make a difference for the warning.

If you can suggest a better way to do this than to set the locale to en_US.UTF-8, please do. For now I suppose your best bet is to install the locale. Or ignore the warning, I don't think it affects functionality.

Also, en_US.UTF-8 is a really common locale, I'm surprised that there are systems that don't have it. Maybe it just needs to be compiled? Something like sudo locale-gen en_US.UTF-8 might be all that's missing?

[Fooughhy]

Well. wouldn't it be enough to enforce a "en_*" locale then?

And I am guessing this is where this is done (specifically for "Command log" at least):
https://github.com/jesseduffield/lazygit/blob/master/pkg/commands/oscommands/cmd_obj_runner.go#L324

I think you use it specifically to detect when "git" (or I guess the underlying "credential-helper"?) requests for authentication. Is that correct?

[stefanhaller]

Well. wouldn't it be enough to enforce a "en_*" locale then?

I don't know, I'm not an expert at locale stuff. I suppose it would also be possible to set it to "C" (and probably best, because that's guaranteed to be available everywhere). Anybody know more about this and want to chime in?

I think you use it specifically to detect when "git" (or I guess the underlying "credential-helper"?) requests for authentication. Is that correct?

Yes, but that's not the only case. We also use it for doing rebases (here and here), because we parse common error messages and react to them here.