Re: Setting default GNOME settings with XDG_DATA_DIRS
On Fri, 2010-08-27 at 21:32 +0000, Camaleón wrote:
> On Fri, 27 Aug 2010 15:50:56 -0400, John A. Sullivan III wrote:
>
> > On Wed, 2010-08-25 at 13:15 +0000, Camaleón wrote:
>
> >> That was just intended to check your setup.
> >>
> >> If that works, then something is missing at your side. If that also
> >> fail, then you could open a bug report.
> > Yes, indeed, if we place defaults.list in ~/.local/share/applications/
> > it works.
>
> Mmm... then looks like a configuration issue.
No, I think it is a matter of understanding how Gnome determines its
priorities.
>
> (...)
>
> > I think we see the problem, the values in $XDG_DATA_DIRS are being
> > superseded by /usr/share/gnome/applications/defaults.list which is a
> > symbolic link to /etc/gnome-vfs-2.0/defaults.list. Where is this
> > /usr/share/gnome/applications coming from and why is it overriding
> > XDG_DATA_DIRS? Thanks - John
>
> Before I'm going nuts with all these dirs ;-), try to set your common
> path to both "XDG_DATA_HOME" and "XDG_DATA_DIRS" because "XDG_DATA_HOME"
> seems to have the top preference over the rest of the variables.
>
> ***
> XDG_DATA_HOME=/data/.Common/xdg/default
> XDG_DATA_DIRS=/data/.Common/xdg/default:/usr/share:/usr/local/share::/opt/trinity/share/:/usr/share/
> ***
>
> As per "Environment variables¹" chapter:
>
> ***
> The order of base directories denotes their importance; the first
> directory listed is the most important. When the same information is
> defined in multiple places the information defined relative to the more
> important base directory takes precedent. The base directory defined by
> $XDG_DATA_HOME is considered more important than any of the base
> directories defined by $XDG_DATA_DIRS. The base directory defined by
> $XDG_CONFIG_HOME is considered more important than any of the base
> directories defined by $XDG_CONFIG_DIRS.
> ***
>
> ¹ http://standards.freedesktop.org/basedir-spec/basedir-spec-latest.html
>
<snip>
Thanks but I think that would be a really bad idea. If I understand it
correctly (and I may not), XDG_DATA_HOME points to where the USER
settings versus the system settings are stored which is why it has teh
highest precedence. If we repoint it to /data/.Commond/xdg/default,
then ~/.local will no longer be searched and, since users do not have
write access to the centralized configuration, they will not be able to
save their customizations. I believe XDG_DATA_HOME is used when you
want the user settings directory to be something other than the
default .local directory. To manage system wide settings, one uses
XDF_DATA_DIRS. At least so I think - John
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