Created attachment 2608 modified startup script Even though I overwrote XDG_CONFIG_HOME, and have it exported, xfconf still saves and reads from $HOME/.config/xfce4/xfconf, other programs like xfce4-panel use the value in XDG_CONFIG_HOME.
Setting an explicit XDG_CONFIG_HOME works fine here. Otherwise the test suite wouldn't work...
Created attachment 2609 $HOME/.config immediately after login I have attached a tar of my $HOME/.config immediately after logging in with the startqimo session. As you can see, there is a .config/qimo and also a .config/xfce4
Also, when I change my desktop settings, they get saved under $HOME/.config/xfce4/xfconf/xfce-perchannel-xml/xfce4-desktop.xml
Created attachment 2610 /etc/xdg/qimo/xfce4/xinitrc I over-wrote the XDG_CACHE_HOME here also, which works for everything.
Only reason why that might happen is if xfconfd is already running before you set XDG_CONFIG_HOME. It uses the same system functions as the rest of Xfce does to discover the configuration directories. If I add a printf when it starts to list the save location, I get: brian@volta ~ $ killall xfconfd brian@volta ~ $ export XDG_CONFIG_HOME=/home/brian/xdg-test/config brian@volta ~ $ /opt/xfce4-svn/libexec/xfconfd save path is: /home/brian/xdg-test/config/xfce4/xfconf/xfce-perchannel-xml/
That looks to be the case, where does xfconfd get called in the startup?
It isn't; it's started on demand by dbus.
The startqimo script is started by GDM when you log in, is there something before that (in GDM perhaps) that would trigger xfconf through dbus?
I don't know anything about GDM.