gnome-do 0.6.1.0-0ubuntu2 fails to start with Unhandled Exception: System.ArgumentException: First component must not be null or empty

[Stéphane Graber]

Binary package hint: gnome-do

When starting gnome-do 0.6.1.0-0ubuntu2 on our application servers (multiple LTSP and NX users) gnome-do fails to start with:

Unhandled Exception: System.ArgumentException: First component must not be null or empty
Parameter name: first
  at Do.Paths.Combine (System.String first, System.String[] components) [0x00000]
  at Do.Paths.get_SystemData () [0x00000]
  at Do.Paths.get_SystemPlugins () [0x00000]
  at Do.Core.PluginManager.get_RepositoryUrls () [0x00000]
  at Do.Core.PluginManager.Initialize () [0x00000]
  at Do.Do.Main (System.String[] args) [0x00000]

That's on Intrepid with the regular gnome-do installation, running other mono softwares like tomboy works fine.

[Chris Halse Rogers (raof)]

So, the only way I can see the code failing is if the XDG_DATA_DIRS environment variable is terminated by a ':', meaning it has an empty component, which seems somewhat malformed.

Can you post the output of "echo $XDG_DATA_DIRS" from a NX or LTSP session?

[Stéphane Graber (stgraber)]

After some debugging it looks like the error was mine.
XDG_DATA_DIRS was starting with a : instead of the first value making gnome-do to fail.

This was probably caused by our custom xdg desktop-profiles making Xsession to generate a wrong XDG_DATA_DIRS variable.

I'm closing the bug as Invalid, though better error reporting would be great and would have saved me a lot of time debugging the issue :)

[Stéphane Graber (stgraber)]

Oh, thanks for the quick answer, I actually only saw it when closing my bug report.
So you were absolutely right it was indeed a XDG_DATA_DIRS issue, I'll have a look at it tomorrow to find what's causing it.

Thanks