sway session does not source /etc/profile or ~/.profile

[Douglas Royds]

/usr/share/wayland-sessions/sway.desktop executes sway directly, not via a login shell, so /etc/profile is not sourced. Additionally, when the user opens a terminal (by default via x-terminal-emulator), this is not a login shell, so the user's ~/.profile is not sourced either. This is unexpected behaviour.

There was an extensive discussion on this subject for gnome wayland sessions [1] resolved by (amongst other things) adding logic to /usr/bin/gnome-session [2].

For my own personal use, I have created a /usr/bin/sway-session script that I launch from my own .desktop file in /usr/share/wayland-sessions:

#!/bin/sh
. /etc/profile
test -r ~/.profile && . ~/.profile
exec sway

Ubuntu 20.04.2 LTS
sway 1.4-2

[1] https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=736660
[2] https://bug736660.bugzilla-attachments.gnome.org/attachment.cgi?id=343441

[Douglas Royds (douglas-royds)]

On my install, I have /usr/bin/sh -> bash

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.