[Pkg-xfce-devel] Bug#648553: Bug#648553: xfce4-utils: runs xrdb -merge with the -nocpp option

Russ Allbery rra at debian.org
Thu Nov 17 21:19:28 UTC 2011


Yves-Alexis Perez <corsac at debian.org> writes:

> I've asked Xfce people about that, and they don't really remember why
> -nocpp is passed. Looking a bit on Google, I found
> http://mail.gnome.org/archives/gnomecc-list/2005-October/msg00024.html
> and I think the command line was basically copied from Gnome, or
> something like that.

It definitely makes sense to use -nocpp in these situations, where one is
passing known input that isn't using the preprocessor.

> So removing -nocpp might means slowing down the session start, which is
> a bit unfortunate.

Well, hopefully one would only use the default behavior when loading the
user's personal configuration (and maybe system-wide defaults), where cpp
is part of the expected interface.  My guess is that wouldn't lead to any
visible slowdown, although I admit I've not tested.

> What puzzles me though, is that afaict the settings should have already
> been applied by /etc/X11/Xsession.d/30x11-common_xresources and the call
> in /etc/xdg/xfce4/xinitrc should only merge new stuff, not replace them.
> How comes it doesn't work for you?

I have never understood exactly what xrdb -merge does in this sort of case
where one is loading the same file twice and it's setting a single-valued
resource.  The man page has always been ambiguous about that ("merged and
lexicographically sorted with," which doesn't clearly say "the current
value will be kept" or "the new value will be kept").

I did a brief experiment, changing a resource that was already set
(XTerm*VT100.geometry) and then loading .Xresources again with xrdb -merge
and the new setting overrode the previous setting after xrdb -merge.  So I
think that at least in some cases the results of the second invocation
will overwrite the first.

-- 
Russ Allbery (rra at debian.org)               <http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>





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