Short GNOME Forum Inquiry: Guix Apps Only Show with Bash

Desktop
1

Hello,

I’m facing an issue where applications installed via GNU Guix do not appear in the GNOME Shell App Launcher, even though the $XDG_DATA_DIRS environment variable is set correctly and includes the Guix profile path.

The crucial finding is that the applications only appear when my login shell is set to Bash. If I switch my login shell to Zsh (using a standard .zprofile setup), the applications do not appear.

Key Points:

  • Bash works: Guix apps show up when my login shell is set to bash.
  • Zsh fails: Guix apps disappear when my login shell is set to zsh.
  • Variable is correct: I have verified inside the running GNOME session that $XDG_DATA_DIRS correctly includes /home/lamby/.guix-profile/share/ in both cases.
  • Expected error: I receive a “Read-only file system” error when running update-desktop-database on the Guix path, which is normal for Guix.

My Question:

Why would GNOME Shell successfully read the .desktop files when the session starts via a Bash login, but fail to do so when the session starts via a Zsh login, despite the environment variable being correct in both resulting sessions?

Is there a known issue with how GDM/GNOME sources environment files specifically when Zsh is the login shell, or a known incompatibility between Zsh and the standard Guix environment setup that affects GNOME’s application scanning?

Thank you for any insight!

2

Do the .desktop files provide the full path to their binaries on the Exec line? If not, does $PATH differ between your two shells?