From mboxrd@z Thu Jan  1 00:00:00 1970
From: Timothy Sample <samplet@ngyro.com>
Subject: Re: Setting environment variables in Gnome session
Date: Wed, 28 Aug 2019 21:15:58 -0400
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In-Reply-To: <1567039835.10983.0@terracrypt.net> (Jonathan Frederickson's
 message of "Wed, 28 Aug 2019 20:50:35 -0400")
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To: Jonathan Frederickson <jonathan@terracrypt.net>
Cc: help-guix@gnu.org

Hi Jonathan,

Jonathan Frederickson <jonathan@terracrypt.net> writes:

> On Wed, Aug 28, 2019 at 8:40 PM, Timothy Sample <samplet@ngyro.com>
> wrote:
>> If you use GDM and GNOME, and have Bash as your shell, you need to set
>> the variables in =E2=80=9C~/.bash_profile=E2=80=9D or =E2=80=9C~/.bashrc=
=E2=80=9D.  Guix System sets
>> up
>> GDM to run your X session from the your login shell (which I=E2=80=99m
>> assuming
>> is Bash).  Since Guix System provides a =E2=80=9C~/.bash_profile=E2=80=
=9D file by
>> default, Bash will read this and skip =E2=80=9C~/.profile=E2=80=9D.
>>
>> So if you set the variables in a Bash-specific file it should work.
>>
>>
>> -- Tim
>
> Thanks, but the environment variable I'm looking to set needs to apply
> to Gnome itself rather than my terminal shell. It's the search path
> that Gnome uses to find XDG application files. I believe
> ~/.bash_profile is only read by bash specifically?

Yes.  Because Bash is your login shell, it gets invoked as part of
spawning your X session.  Because of this, Bash-specific configuration
files affect your X session=E2=80=99s environment.

> (I've just tried adding the relevant env var to ~/.bash_profile in any
> case, but it doesn't seem to have affected gnome-shell's environment.)

In my =E2=80=9C~/.bash_profile=E2=80=9D, I wrote

    export PROFILE_MESSAGE=3DHI

Then, I logged out of GNOME and logged back in to GNOME.  After that, I
opened a program =E2=80=93 not a terminal :) =E2=80=93 from GNOME Shell and=
 confirmed
that it sees that =E2=80=9CPROFILE_MESSAGE=E2=80=9D is set to =E2=80=9CHI=
=E2=80=9D.

Did you log out and in again?


-- Tim