Setting `XDG_CURRENT_DESKTOP` in `~/.profile` no longer works, breaking applications that depend on it

[DemiMarie]

Qubes OS release

Qubes OS 4.3

Brief summary

If I set XDG_CURRENT_DESKTOP in ~/.profile, it gets overwritten.

Steps to reproduce

1. export XDG_CURRENT_DESKTOP=GNOME in ~/.profile.
2. Run an application that depends on its value.

Expected behavior

The application runs with XDG_CURRENT_DESKTOP=GNOME in its environment.

Actual behavior

The application runs with XDG_CURRENT_DESKTOP=XFCE in its environment.

Additional information

This may seem like a strange need, but Google Chrome only picks up proxy settings from GSettings if XDG_CURRENT_DESKTOP is set to GNOME. Therefore, this broke my SOCKS5 proxy settings.

[marmarek]

I guess this, it was always the case in xfce template. Maybe you used different (gnome?) template before?

[DemiMarie]

The bug definitely started when I switched from R4.2 to R4.3. I can check if there is other relevant configuration, but I know this with certainty. The template I used is based on debian-13-xfce with some additional packages installed, and was upgraded to R4.3 in-place instead of being reinstalled.

[ben-grande]

Maybe QubesOS/qubes-gui-agent-linux#246?

[DemiMarie]

That would not surprise me. Can I test by setting the variable in a file in that directory?

[ben-grande]

@ArrayBolt3 ^

[ArrayBolt3]

I don't see how that PR could cause the problem. The code added to qubes-gui-runuser.c in that PR runs before /etc/profile.d/* and ~/.profile are sourced, so anything it does should be overridden by ~/.profile. (Unless of course I have the load order wrong and somehow it goes ~/.profile -> qubes-gui-runuser -> /etc/profile.d/*, but that seems wrong.)

@DemiMarie Do any variables you set in ~/.profile get set? If you add TESTVAR=hi, then reboot the VM, can you run env | grep TESTVAR and see that it's set to hi? Part of me is wondering if some weirdness is happening that results in applications not inheriting their environment variables from a login shell.

[DemiMarie]

@ArrayBolt3 I can confirm that TESTVAR does not get set.

[ArrayBolt3]

@DemiMarie What shell are you using? zsh might skip over ~/.profile.

[DemiMarie]

@ArrayBolt3 Plain bash, but I thought ~/.profile was sourced by Qubes OS explicitly rather than by virtue of running a login shell.