Re: Export environment variables only in `guix environment`.

[Fis Trivial]

Hi:

Ludovic Courtès writes:

> Hello,
>
> Fis Trivial <address@hidden> skribis:
>
>> * Problem
>> The exported environment variables can cause various problems in foreign
>> distribution(1)(2). And besides, The long list of environment variables(4)
>> injected into user's login shell makes the user's environment impure.
>> So, I believe that if I want to run guix safely on a foreign distributions, I
>> need to eliminate the need for exporting environment variables from guix to 
>> my
>> login shell.
>
> Can you clarify what problems you are facing?
>

There are 2 footnote notations after "foreign distributions", (1) and
(2), the footnotes are appended at the end of origin mail. Those are 2
bug reports from me:). (3) from the origin mail is a github issue about
this problem from NixOS.

> I remember one problematic case on foreign distros, that of XDG_DATA_DIRS:
>
>   https://bugs.gnu.org/26202
>

I read this bug report before, this particular env is about gnome shell
accessing installed GUI applications, not directly related to accessing
libraries. It's hard to avoid if you want to use GUI apps from guix. But
libraries related envs like PYTHONPATH can be avoided.

> The environment variable settings that ‘guix package’ produces are here
> to ensure that software installed with Guix will work as expected.
> Ignoring them wholesale (à la Nix) doesn’t sound like a good idea.  :-)
>
> Thanks,
> Ludo’.

Thanks for your time.