language-selector-gnome modifies ~/.profile

[Hadmut Danisch]

Hi,

I just found that changing the language settings through gnome-control-center modifies ~/.profile

This is an absolute NO GO. Never ever automatically modify ~/.profile.

Plenty of reasons. One reason is that it can make it impossible to login if something does not work as expected. Second is that it makes it difficult/impossible to keep the profiles in sync between different machines. This is severe bad design.

If you can't do it in any proper way inside the gnome environment, write it into a separate file and use a ". file" in .profile.

But never ever try to fiddle around or overwrite a user-written .profile.

BTW, the script fails if the .profile contains several export commands e.g. in a case instruction. This is *REALLY BAD*.

(which, btw., proves that moving the language setting from the Desktop Manager into the Desktop was definitely a bad idea. This is worse than just poor design. This is really idiotic.)

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 11.10
Package: language-selector-gnome 0.56
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 3.0.0-13.21-generic 3.0.6
Uname: Linux 3.0.0-13-generic x86_64
ApportVersion: 1.23-0ubuntu4
Architecture: amd64
Date: Tue Nov 1 23:45:09 2011
EcryptfsInUse: Yes
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 10.04 LTS "Lucid Lynx" - Release amd64 (20100427.1)
PackageArchitecture: all
ProcEnviron:
 PATH=(custom, user)
 LANG=en_US.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/tcsh
SourcePackage: language-selector
UpgradeStatus: Upgraded to oneiric on 2011-10-29 (3 days ago)

[Hadmut Danisch (hadmut)]

btw., there's lots of better files for doing that. Files in /etc/X11/Xsession.d read things like ~/.gnomerc or ~/.xsessionrc which would be much better (or even use a specific file for language settings), but under all circumstances keep fingers from ~/.profile.

Even worse, this affects the settings if someone is logging in through ssh or with other desktops.

[Gunnar Hjalmarsson (gunnarhj)]

Thanks for your effort to help improve Ubuntu by reporting this issue. It has previously been addressed in another bug report, so I mark this bug as a duplicate.