GNU bug report logs - #53447
[PATCH] doc: Unset environment variables considered harmful

Previous Next

Full log

View this message in rfc822 format

From: Liliana Marie Prikler <liliana.prikler <at> gmail.com>
To: Ludovic Courtès <ludo <at> gnu.org>
Cc: 53447 <at> debbugs.gnu.org
Subject: [bug#53447] [PATCH] doc: Unset environment variables considered harmful
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

Previous Next

GNU bug tracking system
Copyright (C) 1999 Darren O. Benham, 1997,2003 nCipher Corporation Ltd, 1994-97 Ian Jackson.