Pelican 3.3 Pelican-Quickstart Error: "ValueError: Unknown Locale: UTF-8"

When attempting to use pelican3.3, errors like the following might occur when invoking the "pelican-quickstart" command:

ValueError: unknown locale: UTF-8

Cause

This error is caused by a discrepancy between the assumptions made by Python and the locale settings on your operating system. Python expects the locale name to follow a specific format, which is not always the case.

Solution

1. Set Locale Environment Variables

You can manually set the locale environment variables in your ~/.bash_profile to work around this problem:

export LC_ALL=en_US.UTF-8
export LANG=en_US.UTF-8

2. Choose a Valid Locale

Please note that the fix above assumes English and the United States as the preferred locale. You should choose an appropriate locale from the list provided by locale -a. Generally, select one that ends in UTF-8.

3. Bug Report

An open bug report highlights this issue, indicating that Python makes incorrect assumptions about the format of locale names. Setting the environment variables is a workaround for this problem.