Alleviate the pain in working with utf8 templates by setting a default encoding.

railties/lib/rails/application/configuration.rb

@@ -6,21 +6,29 @@ class Configuration < ::Rails::Engine::Configuration
       include ::Rails::Configuration::Deprecated
 
       attr_accessor :allow_concurrency, :cache_classes, :cache_store,
-                    :secret_token, :consider_all_requests_local, :dependency_loading,
+                    :encoding, :consider_all_requests_local, :dependency_loading,
                     :filter_parameters,  :log_level, :logger, :metals,
                     :plugins, :preload_frameworks, :reload_engines, :reload_plugins,
-                    :serve_static_assets, :time_zone, :whiny_nils
+                    :secret_token, :serve_static_assets, :time_zone, :whiny_nils
 
       def initialize(*)
         super
-        @allow_concurrency   = false
-        @filter_parameters   = []
-        @dependency_loading  = true
+        @allow_concurrency = false
+        @consider_all_requests_local = false
+        @encoding = "utf-8"
+        @filter_parameters = []
+        @dependency_loading = true
         @serve_static_assets = true
-        @time_zone           = "UTC"
-        @consider_all_requests_local = true
         @session_store = :cookie_store
         @session_options = {}
+        @time_zone = "UTC"
+      end
+
+      def encoding=(value)
+        @encoding = value
+        if defined?(Encoding) && Encoding.respond_to?(:default_external=)
+          Encoding.default_external = value
+        end
       end
 
       def middleware

railties/lib/rails/generators/rails/app/templates/config/application.rb

@@ -46,6 +46,9 @@ class Application < Rails::Application
     #   g.test_framework  :test_unit, :fixture => true
     # end
 
+    # Configure the default encoding used in templates for Ruby 1.9.
+    config.encoding = "utf-8"
+
     # Configure sensitive parameters which will be filtered from the log file.
     config.filter_parameters << :password
   end

railties/test/application/configuration_test.rb

@@ -172,6 +172,18 @@ def teardown
       assert $prepared
     end
 
+    test "config.encoding sets the default encoding" do
+      add_to_config <<-RUBY
+        config.encoding = "utf-8"
+      RUBY
+
+      require "#{app_path}/config/application"
+
+      unless RUBY_VERSION < '1.9'
+        assert_equal Encoding.find("utf-8"), Encoding.default_external
+      end
+    end
+
     def make_basic_app
       require "rails"
       require "action_controller/railtie"