How Many Ways To Start An Xserver - Desktop Customization & Workflow

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movq movq Offline | 13-09-2020, 02:31 PM | #11
Long time nixers
(06-09-2020, 02:16 AM)Halfwit Wrote: I always liked this, a friend made some time back.
https://github.com/Earnestly/sx
This looks clean and simple. I use it now. :) Well, a slightly modified version, so I can keep my ~/.xinitrc and ~/.xserverrc.


I wondered why startx is a shell script and xinit is a C program. Turns out, xinit actually acts as an X client for a brief moment in order to set the environment variable $WINDOWPATH. I have never heard of that and it only shows up in one manpage on my system: brlapi_tty. Indeed, setting this variable was added explicitly for braille support: https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=8013 . The first comment explains what it is:
Quote:a WINDOWPATH environment variable that contains the "window path"
of the X server, i.e. the list of VT or Xnest windows that lead to the actual
session. It might be useful for other uses too.
Well, I've never seen it being used, so maybe only braille support really needs it ...


And one other thing:
Code:
20:31:42   vain : another funny thing: ever read /usr/bin/startx and wondered about all those blank lines? yes, of course, this file is being generated from a template. it's being run through the C preprocessor and contains a bunch of #ifdef's ... %)
20:31:54        : that's also the reason why the file's indentation is mangled ...
20:33:50 @venam : vain: oh really, but I've spent quite a lot of time reading it when writing that article and I thought it was like a left over from some old sysadmin that did
                : that job once and then everyone copied it
20:34:08        : that's pretty interesting too
20:34:12   vain : yeah, that's what I thought, too
Can be seen in the source code of xorg-xinit: https://xorg.freedesktop.org/releases/in....1.tar.bz2 . It contains "startx.cpp" with all the ifdefs. The final "startx" script is generated through automake and friends.


Messages In This Thread
How Many Ways To Start An Xserver - by venam - 05-09-2020, 11:50 AM
RE: How Many Ways To Start An Xserver - by venam - 07-09-2020, 02:48 AM
RE: How Many Ways To Start An Xserver - by z3bra - 07-09-2020, 07:31 AM
RE: How Many Ways To Start An Xserver - by venam - 07-09-2020, 03:07 PM
RE: How Many Ways To Start An Xserver - by venam - 08-09-2020, 02:42 AM
RE: How Many Ways To Start An Xserver - by venam - 09-09-2020, 02:12 AM
RE: How Many Ways To Start An Xserver - by movq - 13-09-2020, 02:31 PM

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