locale.present

Parameters

Behavior

Check

Runs locale -a and checks whether the target locale appears in the output. Comparison is case-insensitive and ignores - characters (so en_US.UTF-8 matches en_US.utf8 in output).

Apply

1. Reads /etc/locale.gen. If the locale line is commented out, uncomments it. If the file does not contain the locale at all, appends it. Creates the file if it does not exist.
2. Runs locale-gen to regenerate the locale database.

Revert

1. Re-comments the locale line in /etc/locale.gen.
2. Runs locale-gen to regenerate without the locale.

Examples

# Enable US English UTF-8 locale
en_US.UTF-8:
  locale.present:
    - require:
      - pkg.installed:locales

# Enable multiple locales
de_DE.UTF-8:
  locale.present: []

fr_FR.UTF-8:
  locale.present:
    - require:
      - locale.present:de_DE.UTF-8

Notes

• This module is targeted at Debian/Ubuntu systems that use /etc/locale.gen and locale-gen.
• On Red Hat-based systems, locale management uses localectl — use cmd.run with localectl set-locale instead.
• The locale binary and locale-gen must be available on the target system (locales package on Debian/Ubuntu).
• Locale names in /etc/locale.gen must include the encoding suffix (e.g. en_US.UTF-8 UTF-8). The module appends UTF-8 as a default encoding when adding a new line.