Nix programs on path but not found

[Stefan Baums <baums@stefanbaums.com>]

Dear all,

I am running Guix with EXWM. Prior to Guix, in Ubuntu, I used
~/.xinitrc to set some environment variables and run some startup
programs. Since this is apparently not read in Guix+EXWM, I put
the following at the top of my ~/.exwm instead:

   (setenv "PATH" (concat (getenv "PATH") ":/home/user/.nix-profile/bin"))
   (setq exec-path (append exec-path '("/home/user/.nix-profile/bin")))

followed by:

   (start-process "xinit" "xinit" "bash" "/home/user/.xinitrc")

After startup, in eshell I then get:

   ~ $ echo $PATH
   /run/setuid-programs:/home/user/.config/guix/current/bin:/home/user/.guix-profile/bin:/home/user/.guix-profile/sbin:/run/current-system/profile/bin:/run/current-system/profile/sbin:/gnu/store/0c1yfbxyv877mlgychfgvmk5ha2jqh52-gzip-1.10/bin:/gnu/store/8fpk2cja3f07xls48jfnpgrzrljpqivr-coreutils-8.32/bin:/home/user/.nix-profile/bin

and when I check the value of exec-path, it is:

   ("/run/setuid-programs" "/home/user/.config/guix/current/bin" "/home/user/.guix-profile/bin" "/home/user/.guix-profile/sbin" "/run/current-system/profile/bin" "/run/current-system/profile/sbin" "/gnu/store/0c1yfbxyv877mlgychfgvmk5ha2jqh52-gzip-1.10/bin" "/gnu/store/8fpk2cja3f07xls48jfnpgrzrljpqivr-coreutils-8.32/bin" "/gnu/store/955rbw95zj8g2a3ail5zf9ml7jzi4zr0-emacs-27.2/libexec/emacs/27.2/x86_64-pc-linux-gnu" "/home/user/.nix-profile/bin")

(both as expected).

From ansi-term and from async-shell-command, I am now also able to
run programs installed in my Nix profile (e.g., onboard), but NOT
from eshell (even though PATH is there shown as above), and NOT
from the .xinitrc invoked from my .exwm startup script.

Does anybody what is going on here, and how to fix it?

All best,
Stefan