RXVT not using .Xdefaults

[Joshua Kugler]

Binary package hint: rxvt

I realized today that rxvt was not honoring my .Xdefaults file. After reading the man page, I say that the output of 'rxvt -h' does in fact note that it does not use .Xdefaults:

rxvt -h
Usage v2.6.4 : (utmp,XGetDefaults)
rxvt [-help]

Whereas on a system that does honor .Xdefaults:

rxvt -h
Rxvt v2.7.10 - released: 26 MARCH 2003
Options: XPM,transparent,utmp,menubar,XIM,multichar_languages,scrollbars=rxvt+NeXT+xterm,.Xdefaults

We're apparently using a really old version of rxvt as well. Could we at least compile it to honor .XDefaults?

[Joshua Kugler (jkugler)]

Oddity of oddities...today, with no changes that I know of on my part, it is now honoring my .Xdefaults file. If it crops up again, I'll re-open the bug.

[CapSel (capsel)]

As manual states it should read this file, and on my system it does not. It does not read .Xresources and /etc/X11/app-defaults/Rxvt, neither.

[CapSel (capsel)]

It still does not work.

[Jonathan Marsden (jmarsden)]

Workaround: use rxvt-unicode instead of rxvt.

I'm looking at a patch to compile rxvt with .Xdefaults support.

[Jonathan Marsden (jmarsden)]

rxvt is currently compiled to use XGetDefault().

XGetDefault() does indeed use values from ~/.Xdefaults, but only after they are merged into the resource database.

This happens at session startup (as the original reporter apparently discovered by accident), or you can run:

  xrdb -merge ~/.XDefaults

after editing ~/.Xdefaults, to update the resource database.

On this basis, this issue is not really a bug, simply a decision made by the packager. So this is Invalid : NotABug.

Jonathan