Gtk+ themes

Gtk+ themes

[Fabian Harfert]

Hi!

Looking into this source file I found out that it would make it
possible to support Gtk+ themes out of the box, if the environment
variable GTK_DATA_PREFIX is set to the base directory of the user's
profile (e.g. /home/rms/.guix_profile/). I tried it with lxapearance
and it seems to work. The problem Mark mentioned on IRC is that this
can't contain multiple directories. But looking at the sources (e.g.
https://git.gnome.org/browse/gtk+/tree/gtk/gtkcssprovider.c, line 2071)
this seems to be the only opportunity to set this. Any ideas? Maybe
there's a better option, I don't know.

Fabian

Re: Gtk+ themes

[Ricardo Wurmus]

Fabian Harfert <fhmgufs@web.de> writes:

> Looking into this source file I found out that it would make it
> possible to support Gtk+ themes out of the box, if the environment
> variable GTK_DATA_PREFIX is set to the base directory of the user's
> profile (e.g. /home/rms/.guix_profile/). I tried it with lxapearance
> and it seems to work. The problem Mark mentioned on IRC is that this
> can't contain multiple directories. But looking at the sources (e.g.
> https://git.gnome.org/browse/gtk+/tree/gtk/gtkcssprovider.c, line 2071)
> this seems to be the only opportunity to set this. Any ideas? Maybe
> there's a better option, I don't know.

It does seem to be the only environment variable to allow for a
different location for themes.  It also doesn’t seem to negatively
affect anything else.  (‘_gtk_get_data_prefix ()’ still returns the
compile-time prefix and is used to find ‘settings.ini’.)

GTK_DATA_PREFIX is not a search path, so it’s expected that only one
directory can be specified.  Is this a problem?

~~ Ricardo

[PATCH] system: Define 'GTK_DATA_PREFIX' in /etc/profile.

[Fabian Harfert]

* gnu/system.scm (operating-system-etc-service)[profile]: Add
  'GTK_DATA_PREFIX' definition.
---
 gnu/system.scm | 4 ++++
 1 file changed, 4 insertions(+)

diff --git a/gnu/system.scm b/gnu/system.scm
index ff3a400..81c38e7 100644
--- a/gnu/system.scm
+++ b/gnu/system.scm
@@ -2,6 +2,7 @@
 ;;; Copyright © 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016 Ludovic Courtès <ludo@gnu.org>
 ;;; Copyright © 2015 Mark H Weaver <mhw@netris.org>
 ;;; Copyright © 2015 Alex Kost <alezost@gmail.com>
+;;; Copyright © 2016 Fabian Harfert <fhmgufs@web.de>
 ;;;
 ;;; This file is part of GNU Guix.
 ;;;
@@ -479,6 +480,9 @@ fi
 # Allow GStreamer-based applications to find plugins.
 export GST_PLUGIN_PATH=\"$HOME/.guix-profile/lib/gstreamer-1.0\"
 
+# Allow Gtk+ to find themes
+export GTK_DATA_PREFIX=\"$HOME/.guix-profile\"
+
 if [ -n \"$BASH_VERSION\" -a -f /etc/bashrc ]
 then
   # Load Bash-specific initialization code.
-- 
2.7.0

Re: Gtk+ themes

[Fabian Harfert]

Hi!

> GTK_DATA_PREFIX is not a search path, so it’s expected that only one
> directory can be specified.  Is this a problem?

I don't know, I've sent a patch adding it to the /etc/profile file, as
Mark (Weaver) suggested first. But this affects only the user profile
and not the system profile, so far I understand it. But for example the
GStreamer plugins path environment variable is also defined there.

While I've understood the main aspects and principals of Guix as a
package manager, that's not the case for the services and the system
distribution. The reason might be (and is) that I'm not running it for
now.

Fabian.