Re: Setting environment variables in Gnome session

[Timothy Sample <samplet@ngyro.com>]

Hi Jonathan,

Jonathan Frederickson <jonathan@terracrypt.net> writes:

> I'm trying to install some software through Flatpak alongside software
> installed through Guix (on a Guix System install) and I'm running into
> what feels like it should be a minor issue. On other distros (including
> my desktop where I'm running Guix as a foreign package manager), I
> would modify XDG_DATA_DIRS in $HOME/.profile to accomplish this.
>
> However, my Gnome session in Guix System seems to ignore this file. 
> I've tried creating a file in my home directory in /etc/profile like
> so, and as far as I can tell it's never getting run:
>
> export XDG_DATA_DIRS=$XDG_DATA_DIRS:/var/lib/flatpak/exports/share
> echo "hi there!" > $HOME/test.txt
>
> Is there a preferred way to set environment variables in a graphical
> session?

If you use GDM and GNOME, and have Bash as your shell, you need to set
the variables in “~/.bash_profile” or “~/.bashrc”.  Guix System sets up
GDM to run your X session from the your login shell (which I’m assuming
is Bash).  Since Guix System provides a “~/.bash_profile” file by
default, Bash will read this and skip “~/.profile”.

So if you set the variables in a Bash-specific file it should work.


-- Tim