Hi Liliana, Liliana Marie Prikler <liliana.prik...@ist.tugraz.at> writes:
> Hi, > > Am Montag, dem 24.01.2022 um 17:24 -0500 schrieb Maxim Cournoyer: >> Hello! >> >> There are multiple reports about the negative effects of Guix setting >> variables such as XDG_DATA_DIRS on foreign distributions, that may >> cause problems a severe as locking users out of their graphical >> session [0]. >> >> In my opinion, we should pursue patching every application/library to >> use a Guix-specific variant, e.g. GUIX_XDG_DATA_DIRS instead of >> XDG_DATA_DIRS, to avoid interfering with the host system, as was done >> for GUIX_PYTHONPATH. >> >> This is a big task in itself; we can open more focused/actionable >> tasks for each environment variable, starting with those causing the >> most serious issues. >> >> Any takers? > I'm not convinced that patching XDG_DATA_DIRS is a good solution here. > Even if we go forward and implement this for each and every > library/application, (it would be reasonably simple to do so for glib > and qt at least, but there's many more consumers, including Guix > itself), we'd just force users on foreign distros to set up their > XDG_DATA_DIRS for us if they e.g. want to have desktop icons available, > so they'd quickly encounter the same issue on their own. They may end up doing so, but at least they wouldn't be locked out of their graphical session just for installing a package from Guix, which is a clear improvement over the current situation. > I see two ways forward for this: First, "ignore it" and just document > the behaviour. This isn't just a bug Guix is suffering from, it also > affects other third-party package installers like Flatpak and Snap. > > Since distros increasingly become aware of them, this will soon no > longer be an issue for most our users. Second, extend search-paths > with a way of enforcing a default value when none is set. This way, > Guix will still override XDG_DATA_DIRS, but since > $HOME/.local/share:/usr/share is set as the default as per spec, it > will do what the distro expected. That sounds good to, and should be easier to achieve. Thanks, Maxim
