Getting ready

Let's get ready for the exercise by ensuring that we have the following applications and supporting libraries installed:

$ sudo apt-get install -y gettext

Next, verify your language environment variables (LANG):

$ locale
LANG=en_CA:en
LANGUAGE=en_CA:en
LC_CTYPE="en_CA:en"
LC_NUMERIC="en_CA:en"
LC_TIME="en_CA:en"
LC_COLLATE="en_CA:en"
LC_MONETARY="en_CA:en"
LC_MESSAGES="en_CA:en"
LC_PAPER="en_CA:en"
LC_NAME="en_CA:en"
LC_ADDRESS="en_CA:en"
LC_TELEPHONE="en_CA:en"
LC_MEASUREMENT="en_CA:en"
LC_IDENTIFICATION="en_CA:en"
LC_ALL=

We're assuming your environment probably has some form of English set as the default (en_CA:en is Canadian English)—keep note of the values returned for later!