Mercurial missing _locale

[wobbet@…]

Running SnowLeopard on 32-bit MacBookPro2,2.

Config edited file to add +universal for all ports.

I performed a

sudo port clean --all all sudo port install python26 sudo port install mercurial

Both reported success.

When I attempt to execute

hg clone ...

I receive the following trace indicating that _locale is missing.

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/opt/local/bin/hg", line 27, in <module>
    mercurial.dispatch.run()
  File
"/opt/local/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.6/lib/python2.6/site-packages/mercurial/dispatch.py",
line 16, in run
    sys.exit(dispatch(sys.argv[1:]))
  File
"/opt/local/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.6/lib/python2.6/site-packages/mercurial/dispatch.py",
line 27, in dispatch
    return _runcatch(u, args)
  File
"/opt/local/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.6/lib/python2.6/site-packages/mercurial/dispatch.py",
line 97, in _runcatch
    ui.warn(_("abort: could not import module %s!\n") % m)
  File
"/opt/local/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.6/lib/python2.6/site-packages/mercurial/i18n.py",
line 43, in gettext
    return u.encode(encoding.encoding, "replace")
  File
"/opt/local/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.6/lib/python2.6/site-packages/mercurial/demandimport.py",
line 75, in __getattribute__
    self._load()
  File
"/opt/local/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.6/lib/python2.6/site-packages/mercurial/demandimport.py",
line 47, in _load
    mod = _origimport(head, globals, locals)
  File
"/opt/local/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.6/lib/python2.6/site-packages/mercurial/encoding.py",
line 22, in <module>
    encoding = locale.getpreferredencoding() or 'ascii'
  File "/opt/local/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.6/lib/python2.6/locale.py",
line 531, in getpreferredencoding
    import _locale
  File
"/opt/local/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.6/lib/python2.6/site-packages/mercurial/demandimport.py",
line 84, in _demandimport
    return _origimport(name, globals, locals, fromlist)
ImportError: No module named _locale

[jmroot (Joshua Root)]

If _locale is missing entirely that would be a problem with python26. Can you import _locale manually in an interactive interpreter? Is /opt/local/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.6/lib/python2.6/lib-dynload/_locale.so present, and if so, what are the permissions on it? (Could be a umask issue a la #21389.)