Subject: bug#48300: closed (Re: Emacs cursor theme is not inherited from the OS when using foreign Guix)

From: Liliana Marie Prikler <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 20 Jan 2022 12:45:09 +0100

Am Donnerstag, dem 20.01.2022 um 08:27 -0300 schrieb Jorge P.de Morais
Neto:
> Hello.  So the solution to the bug is for the user to manually write
> the file ~/.config/systemd/user/gnome-shell-
> x11.service.d/override.conf ?
> 
> I would like to know a little more about that.  What is the advantage
> of specifying the environment variables on that file instead of
> ~/.profile?
> 
> Kind regards,
>   Jorge
In my personal experience, the value did not get sourced correctly when
I put it into .bash_profile.  I do not know about .profile, but I guess
you'll run into similar issues.  In either case, evaluation order is
something you might want to consider.

Now the advantage of doing this at all is that you get finer control
over which environment variables are set when.  It doesn't really make
sense to e.g. set the font path when you're in a terminal.  The
disadvantage is that it's obscure and brittle -- the value TZDIR will
only be correctly set inside GNOME in this example, for other desktop
environments you'd have to copy the definitions.  What if you're
launching just a terminal session?  Don't ask me.

I'm pretty sure there's some systemd file where you can put these
instead, but in the years of using it up to encountering Guix I've
never needed such a thing and now that I do use Guix, I'm quite content
with Shepherd as my PID 1.  I still remember some of systemd's major
features that I miss from shepherd, like socket activation or the
ability to control GNOME Shell at all, but ask me about some incredibly
mundane task like setting a timer and I'll have to consult a manual on
that.

Cheers