xinitrc executableness needs to go (was Re: can't stop xftaskbar from loading)

[Brian J. Tarricone]

Paul M. Bucalo wrote:

>On Sat, 2004-05-01 at 19:35, Andrew Conkling wrote:
>  
>
>>I had similar problems for a long time (my particular issue was stopping
>>the iconbox) and then I finally figured it out: I simply had to make my
>>xinitrc executable.  I guess in the absence of that, it had been
>>defaulting to the global file.
>>    
>>
>On my FC1 laptop, the files mentioned above are not executable, and yet
>I am able to modify them with expected results. I went ahead and made
>them executable on the RH 9 box, but still no difference.
>
can we please please _please_ change this behaviour?  it's really 
non-intuitive and confusing that the systemwide /etc/xfce4/xinitrc 
doesn't need to be executable (and is shipped as non-executable), but 
the per-user ~/.xfce4/xinitrc needs to be.  looking in the startxfce4 
script, in the part where it just runs those scripts without xinit (in 
the case that X is already running), it runs either script by invoking 
'sh' first anyway, so the files need not be executable.  the scripts 
checks for executableness of ~/.xfce4/xinitrc and only uses it if it 
is.  it really needs to be changed to use the per-user file if it exists 
in any shape or form.

this is a _huge_ point of confusion, and despite the fact that i believe 
it does say in the docs to chmod +x the file, soooo many people miss 
this and get really confused and waste unnecessary time over something 
that isn't worth it, is really non-obvious, and is incredibly stupid.  
this is really the #1 question i see in #xfce (and probably on the ML as 
well)... with requests for desktop icons a close 2nd.

    -brian