Dear Maintainer,

*** Reporter, please consider answering these questions, where appropriate ***

   * What led up to the situation?
Running `dpkg-reconfigure locales` non-interactively or on a minimal environment where target locales are commented out in `/etc/locale.gen`.

   * What exactly did you do (or not do) that was effective (or
     ineffective)?
1. Executed `sudo dpkg-reconfigure locales` (or with `DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive`).
2. The command exited successfully with status 0 and printed "Generation complete." while leaving the target locale still commented out in `/etc/locale.gen` because it checked internal debconf cache rather than parsing the file.

   * What was the outcome of this action?
The tool output a false-positive success message, leaving the system environment stuck on `C.UTF-8` until manual file editing (`sed`) or explicit debconf preseeding was performed.

   * What outcome did you expect instead?
The tool should either automatically enable and generate the configured locale from debconf/environment, or fail with a clear error indicating that the requested locale is commented out in `/etc/locale.gen`.

*** End of the template - remove these template lines ***

Hi,

Could you please share the content of /etc/locale.gen before executing
that command?

Could you please tell me what is the target locale? Is it the one you
selected in the debconf screen? You also mention
DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive so this is confusing.

Again please explain what you selected in the debconf screens.

Could you please tell me what is the "requested locale"? If you selected
a locale to be generated and it is left commented out in
`/etc/locale.gen`, this is indeed a bug. But I can't reproduce it
without more details.

Regards
Aurelien