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 authoritive, 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.
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 :)
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 ingored 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) $(<command>) = <command> needs to exit
succesfully ($?=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.
- Starting with kde 3.3. the kiosk framework can be used to
lock settings down in the profiles, for all unlocked settings
user-specified values are always used when available. (see
http://techbase.kde.org/KDE_System_Administration for more info on the
kiosk-framework, and the format of the kde config files).
- •
- 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),
profile-manager(1),
dh_installlisting(1),
path2listing(1)