diff --git a/Makefile b/Makefile
index 4ece242dc..1487ade6b 100644
--- a/Makefile
+++ b/Makefile
@@ -12,6 +12,14 @@
 # See the License for the specific language governing permissions and
 # limitations under the License.
 
+# Linux doesn't guarantee file ordering, so sort the files to make sure order is deterministic.
+# And in order to handle file paths with spaces, it's easiest to read the file names into an array.
+# Set locale `LC_ALL=C` because different OSes have different sort behavior;
+# `C` sorting order is based on the byte values,
+# Reference: https://blog.zhimingwang.org/macos-lc_collate-hunt
+LC_ALL=C
+export LC_ALL
+
 include build/makelib/common.mk
 include build/makelib/helm.mk
 
diff --git a/build/crds/build-crds.sh b/build/crds/build-crds.sh
index 1f40effe2..06c652a8c 100755
--- a/build/crds/build-crds.sh
+++ b/build/crds/build-crds.sh
@@ -97,13 +97,6 @@ fi
 
 generating_main_crd
 
-# Linux doesn't guarantee file ordering, so we must sort the output to make sure it's deterministic.
-# In order to handle file paths with spaces in the yq command below, it's easiest to read the
-# file names into an array.
-# Set locale `LC_ALL=C` because different OSes have different sort behavior;
-# `C` sorting order is based on the byte values,
-# Reference: https://blog.zhimingwang.org/macos-lc_collate-hunt
-LC_ALL=C
 CRD_FILES=()
 while read -r line; do
   CRD_FILES+=("$line")
diff --git a/build/rbac/keep-rbac-yaml.sh b/build/rbac/keep-rbac-yaml.sh
index b235846c3..098df8364 100755
--- a/build/rbac/keep-rbac-yaml.sh
+++ b/build/rbac/keep-rbac-yaml.sh
@@ -35,12 +35,6 @@ sed '/^# Source: /d' | # helm adds '# Source: <file>' comments atop of each yaml
 $YQ eval --split-exp '.kind + " " + .metadata.name + " "' - # split into files by <kind> <name> .yaml
 # outputting the filenames with spaces after kind and name keeps the same sorting from before
 
-# Linux doesn't guarantee file ordering, so sort the files to make sure order is deterministic.
-# And in order to handle file paths with spaces, it's easiest to read the file names into an array.
-# Set locale `LC_ALL=C` because different OSes have different sort behavior;
-# `C` sorting order is based on the byte values,
-# Reference: https://blog.zhimingwang.org/macos-lc_collate-hunt
-LC_ALL=C
 RBAC_FILES=()
 while read -r line; do
   RBAC_FILES+=("$line")