How to capture all the environment variables from shell?

[Cameron Simpson]

On 12Aug2010 01:28, Nobody <nobody at nowhere.com> wrote:
| On Wed, 11 Aug 2010 13:08:59 +1000, Cameron Simpson wrote:
| > The reason .bashrc gets overused for envars, aside from ignorance and
| > propagated bad habits, is that in a GUI desktop the setup sequence is
| > often a bit backwards. A conventional terminal/console login means you
| > get a login shell that sources your .{bash_}profile. And from there one
| > would start a GUI and all the .profile stuff has been run Once, as it
| > should be. But when the login itself is a GUI the various terminals get
| > started _before_ the .profile stuff gets sourced, because the terminal
| > is started by the desktop manager. Once common "fix" for this is to
| > make all new terminals run login shells. Ugh, but it does work.
| 
| Er, not really. If you don't source your ~/.profile (etc) from e.g.
| ~/.xsession, GUI applications don't get to see the environment settings
| therein. The environment isn't just for shells.

I think we're in violent agreement here. I arrange to do exactly that in
my own desktop setups.

However, the ones that ship with distros generally don't, possibly because a
shell-aborting error in the .profile (or unwanted interaction etc) will abort
the GUI login/desktop-setup.

Cheers,
-- 
Cameron Simpson <cs at zip.com.au> DoD#743
http://www.cskk.ezoshosting.com/cs/

The Puritan hated bear-baiting, not because it gave pain to the bear, but
because it gave pleasure to the spectator. - Macaulay, History of England