Provided by: desktop-profiles_1.4.31_all 
NAME
desktop-profiles - introduction and overview
DESCRIPTION
Desktop-profiles offers a standard way of managing the conditional activation of installed
profiles (sets of configuration and/or data files) for the various Desktop Environments in
Debian.
It currently supports Freedesktop, KDE, Gconf (i.e Gnome), Xfce (>= 4.2), ROX, GNUSTEP and
UDE.
HOW IT WORKS
Each available profile has some metadata associated with it. On X startup an Xsession.d
script is run that looks through the metadata for all profiles and activates profiles
based on what it finds.
Specifically each profile is associated with a set of requirements, and a precedence
value. On X startup the Xsession.d script will filter out those profiles whose
requirements are not met, and then activate the remaining profiles in order of precedence.
Exactly how a profile is activated depends on the profile kind (you don't need to know
this in order to use this package):
• For KDE, Freedesktop, Xfce (>= 4.2), ROX, GNUSTEP and UDE activating profiles is done
by setting environment variables: KDEDIRS for KDE, XDG_CONFIG_DIRS and XDG_DATA_DIRS
for both Freedesktop and Xfce, CHOICESPATH for ROX, GNUSTEP_PATHLIST for GNUSTEP
(usually initialized from the various GNUSTEP_*_ROOT variables) and UDEdir for UDE.
With the exception of UDEdir, which takes a single directory, each of these variables
takes a precedence ordered list of root-directories (of activated profiles).
• For GConf profiles two user-specific path files are generated. One containing the
activated mandatory "configuration sources", one containing the default "configuration
sources" that are activated.
NOTE:
Environment variables will only be set if their value is different from the default
value, and user-specific path files are only generated if the systemwide gconf path
file will include them. This to avoid unnecessary clutter.
NOTE:
The above means that for Freedesktop, KDE, GNOME, Xfce (>= 4.2), GNUSTEP and ROX any
number of profiles can be activated at the same time. Whereas UDE can only activate 1
profiles at the time.
NOTE:
By default the Xsession.d script will assume the metadata files are authoritative,
meaning it will ignore any values already assigned to the relevant environment
variables.
NOTE:
The default system-wide path contains a number of configuration sources not managed by
desktop-profiles. In order to facilitate the management of all your configuration
sources through desktop-profiles this package provides a script
(/usr/sbin/path2listing) that looks at your current gconf configuration and adapts it
so your configuration sources are all controlled by desktop-profiles (see the man page
for path2listing or the /usr/share/doc/destkop-profiles/README for more information on
this).
INTERACTION WITH OTHER AGENTS ACTIVATING PROFILES
Since profiles are activated through environment variables one issue is how desktop-
profiles deals with the situation where those environment variables have already been set
up by other agents (such an agent could be another script, or the user). Desktop-profiles
has a personality setting that determines how it handles such a situation:
• autocrat: assume desktop-profiles is the only agent allowed to touch the environment
variables, and consequently ignore the contents of already set environment variables.
• rude: profiles added by desktop-profiles take precedence over profiles added by other
agents.
• polite: profiles added by other agents take precedence over profiles added by desktop-
profiles.
• sheep: just meekly follow along with what the other agents have set, don't change
anything (this essentially deactivates desktop-profiles).
The default personality setting of desktop-profiles is polite.
WHERE TO FIND THE PROFILE METADATA
The metadata is specified in .listing files that are placed in the /etc/desktop-profiles
directory. The format of those files is specified in the 'FORMAT OF .listing
FILES'-section below.
NOTE: In order to ensure that packages containing .listing files don't run in to each
other, packages should install such files as <packagename>.listing, or
<packagename>_<something>.listing (there's a debhelper script provided to help with
that :)
FORMAT OF .listing FILES
Each non-empty line in a .listing file is either a comment line, or line containing
profile metadata.
Comment lines start with ´#´ and are purely for human consumption, like empty lines they
are ignored completely by the Xsession.d script.
Lines containing profile metadata are made up of 6 fields separated by a semi-colon (´;´).
Where the meaning of the fields is as follows:
• 1st field : Name of the profile, arbitrary, must be unique within each file, and may
(but probably should not) be empty.
• 2nd field : The kind of profile, must be set, must be one of: KDE, XDG_CONFIG,
XDG_DATA, GCONF, ROX, GNUSTEP, or UDE.
• 3th field:
Location of the root of the profile directory tree, may contain more then 1 directory
(in which case directories should be separated with spaces). Environment variables may
be used when specifying root directories (e.g. $HOME/.extra_config).
Except for Gconf profiles, which use the this field to contain exactly one directive to
be included in the generated path file (directives are either
´xml:(readonly|readwrite):<profile-root>´, or ´include <some-path-file>' ).
• 4th field : A Numeric precedence value for the profile, may be empty (which is treated
as lowest possible precedence).
When 2 (or more) active profiles define a setup for the same thing, the value specified
by the profile with the highest precedence value is used (UDE will onlyuse values from
the highest ranked profile).
• 5th field : Space separated list of conditions that need to be met to activate the
profiles (if more then 1 condition is specified all conditions need to be met to
activate the profile).
There are 3 different kinds of requirements:
1) <group> = user needs to be a member of <group>
2) !<group> = user mustn't be a member of <group>
(Note: '!' deactivates the profile completely)
3) $(<command>) = <command> needs to exit successfully ($?=0)
(Where <command> is an arbitrary shell command)
• 6th field : A description of what the profile is/does, may be empty.
Note that this basically boils down to a CSV-file using ´;´ as separator and allowing
shell-style comments.
CREATING PROFILES
• KDE (through KDEDIRS):
Each profile directory is layed out according to the KDE file system hierarchy (see
http://techbase.kde.org/KDE_System_Administration#File_System)
Config files in the different profiles are merged (in case of conflicting keys, the
value of the highest precedence profile is used). For other files the highest
precedence profile that contains the file supplies it.
• Freedesktop (using XDG_CONFIG_DIRS and XDG_DATA_DIRS)
The 'Desktop base directory specification' defines the basic framework for using
profiles (see http://freedesktop.org/wiki/Specifications/basedir-spec).
The actual contents of the profiles is filled in by things conforming to other
freedesktop standards (e.g. the 'menu specification'). A list of freedesktop standards
(that are being worked on) can be found at http://freedesktop.org/wiki/Specifications.
Most of these standards are still under development and not (yet) widely supported.
Eventually you can probably suspect support of at least KDE, GNOME, ROX, and Xfce.
Xfce (>=4.2) specific settings can also be found in Freedesktop profile dirs (see the
next section for details).
• Xfce (using XDG_CONFIG_DIRS and XDG_DATA_DIRS)
Starting from Xfce version 4.2. Xfce will completely adopt the freedesktop 'Desktop
Base Directory Specification'. Placing any Xfce-only settings in an 'xfce4'
subdirectory of the freedesktop profile directories (with the exception of
xfce4-session, which will use an 'xfce4-session' subdirectory). A more complete
description can be found at http://foo-projects.org/~benny/xfce/file-locations.html.
If two profiles contain the same config file, the one from the profile with the highest
precedence is used.
Xfce versions prior to 4.2. don't support multiple config sets.
• ROX (through CHOICESPATH):
Each profile directory has one subdirectory for each app for which it provides
settings. When a configuration value is needed the profile directories are searched in
order, first profile that contains the file supplies it.
NOTE:
Programs _may_ merge the files the different profiles. If the merging encounters
conflicting values the one from the highest order profile is used.
See http://rox.sourceforge.net/choices.html for a more detailed description.
• GNUSTEP (through GNUSTEP_PATHLIST)
Profiles in GNUSTEP parlance are called domains, and by default GNUSTEP will look in 4
domains (the location of which is indicated by the GNUSTEP_USER_ROOT,
GNUSTEP_LOCAL_ROOT, GNUSTEP_NETWORK_ROOT, and GNUSTEP_SYSTEM_ROOT variables). Though it
is possible to specify extra domains to use through the GNUSTEP_PATHLIST variable, it
isn't often done as configuration files are currently only searched for in the user
domain.
For more information on GNUSTEP domains see
http://www.gnustep.org/resources/documentation/User/GNUstep/filesystem.html
• UDE (through UDEdir):
UDE searches for configuration files in the following directories (first find is used):
1. $HOME/.ude/config
2. $UDEdir/config (or in absence of $UDEdir in the install dir which is /usr/share/ude
on debian)
3. If the configuration file is still not found, UWM takes the filename as it is
(usually dereferencing any environment variables first)
• GNOME (using GConf 'Configuration Sources'):
Two gconf path files are generated for each user on login: one with all the sources
from activated profiles that have a higher precedence then the gconf-user profile
(which is in default.listing), and one containing the sources from activated profiles
with a lower precedence then the gconf-user profiles. Generated path files are put in
/var/cache/desktop-profiles.
Each configuration source is structured like a simple hierarchical file system as
follows:
- Directories correspond to applications that use the GConf repository, except for the
' schemas' directory which contains files describing all of the preference keys.
- Subdirectories correspond to categories of preferences.
- Files list the preference keys in the directory, and contain information about the
keys.
- Configuration Sources are searched in order for each value, first source that has the
value (or is writeable in case of storing values) is used.
-> See the GNOME administration manual for a detailed explanation
FILES
/etc/desktop-profiles/desktop-profiles.listing - Details the default settings for the
various environments. By default the system-wide settings provided by the packager are
given no precedence, which means they will be loaded after all profiles with a precedence
specified (which should be true for all profiles you create).
/etc/X11/Xsession.d/20desktop-profiles_activateDesktopProfiles - Xsesssion.d script that
activates the profiles
/etc/default/desktop-profiles - File containing default settings for the scripts in this
package.
AUTHOR
This manual page was written by Bart Cornelis <cobaco@skolelinux.no>.
SEE ALSO
list-desktop-profiles(1), update-profile-cache(1), dh_installlisting(1), path2listing(1)