Re: xsrc/54851 (.profile is not read by sh when using xdm or other login managers)

[nia <nia%NetBSD.org@localhost>]

The following reply was made to PR xsrc/54851; it has been noted by GNATS.

From: nia <nia%NetBSD.org@localhost>
To: gnats-bugs%netbsd.org@localhost
Cc: 
Subject: Re: xsrc/54851 (.profile is not read by sh when using xdm or other
 login managers)
Date: Wed, 17 Aug 2022 21:59:44 +0000

 On Tue, Aug 16, 2022 at 12:20:02PM +0000, Martin Husemann wrote:
 >  This change is pretty dangerous for users of other shells:
 >  
 >   - it changes the behaviour of the system wide Xsession file
 >     (not a new users template ~/.xsession)
 
 AFAIK, there isn't such thing - only a system-wide default.
 
 >  
 >   - it sources the per user ~/.shrc instead of the system wide /etc/sh.shrc
 >     (that could be adapted for this to just provide reasonable defaults)
 
 Maybe, but it's really unclear what colour we want the bikeshed
 painted.
 
 Judging by the lengthy discussion on developers@, and strong
 objections by some developers to things like certain editing modes,
 I'm extremely reluctant to modify any defaults.
 
 >   - users of other shells will often have outdated (and usually unused)
 >     ~/.shrc files that may set arbitrary (bad/broken) things in their 
 >     environment (with a bit of luck just old versions of PATH,
 >     whatever used to be the default for .shrc when that account
 >     was created)
 >  
 >  Martin
 >  (using tcsh and xdm, so I would be affected)
 >  
 
 My understanding when making the change was that ~/.profile
 is only for sh(1) type shells, and the Xsession file is executed
 in sh(1) through the shebang, and any alternative shell will be
 spawned later.
 
 I'm not sure about tcsh - 
 csh(1) seems to use these files rather than .profile:
 
 FILES
      ~/.cshrc     Read at beginning of execution by each shell.
      ~/.login     Read by login shell, after `.cshrc' at login.
      ~/.logout    Read by login shell, at logout.
 
 The default ~/.cshrc on NetBSD will specify a path, so you'll
 get the right thing regardless of xdm or login shell.