Subject: Re: bug#53447: [PATCH] doc: Unset environment variables considered harmful

From: Liliana Marie Prikler <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 25 Jan 2022 20:21:56 +0100

Hi,

Am Dienstag, dem 25.01.2022 um 08:39 +0100 schrieb Ludovic Courtès:
> We could say that installing certain packages will cause
> ~/.guix-profile/etc/profile to define XDG_DATA_DIRS, that this can
> interfere with software installed outside Guix, such as GNOME, and
> that we recommend unsetting XDG_DATA_DIRS (is that what we recommend?
> breaking Guix-installed packages instead of breaking distro-installed
> packages?)?
XDG_DATA_DIRS can be concatenated just like PATH.  The recommendation
is to explicitly set it before sourcing Guix profiles.  "Unset
environment variables considered harmful" should be read as "It's
harmful not to set these variables", not "those variables are harmful,
don't set them".

As for the GUIX_XDG_DATA_DIRS thing discussed elsewhere, I'd like to
raise the following: do we need GUIX_PATH to not let packages installed
with Guix shadow PATH?

Cheers