Emacs cursor theme is not inherited from the OS when using foreign Guix

Hi there,

I'm experiencing an issue with the emacs-next package on my Guix

foreign setup where the cursor (*not* Emacs point) is very dark. It's

perfectly legible against the default Emacs theme, but nonetheless it

is not respecting the settings of the rest of my system. To make

things worse, I'm currently using (and enjoying!) the modus-vivendi

theme.

My host machine is running Arch GNU/Linux with a tiling window

manager. I set my cursor style using xsetroot like so:

xsetoot -xcf /usr/share/icons/Adwaita/cursors/left_ptr 16

I tried installing the adwaita-icon-theme, gnome-themes-standard, and

gnome-themes-extra packages in an attempt at installing the correct

theme, but that didn't help.

I'm not entirely sure what the issue is, but after speaking with some

folks at #guix, it was suggested to me that this may in fact be a

bug. The other option discussed is that Guix needs its own cursor

settings, but I'm too early on in my journey with Guix (maybe 2 hours

of experience using the Guix binary) to know how set that up - if that

is indeed the case, some pointers on what to read would be very warmly

received!

I'm also not entirely sure what to provide to help debug, so I thought

I'd start off by showing my channels and packages, so that my setup

can be replicated? I hope that is helpful. I've also attached a

screenshot showing the difference while using the

"leuven" theme so there is enough contrast.

Thank you for reading,

JH

---

My channels:

,----

| ;; This channel file can be passed to 'guix pull -C' or to

| ;; 'guix time-machine -C' to obtain the Guix revision that was

| ;; used to populate this profile.

|

| (list

| (channel

| (name 'guix)

| (url "https://git.savannah.gnu.org/git/guix.git")

| (branch "master")

| (commit

| "b2f6b6f6b9df6bcc24794238e7e97357470af95d")

| (introduction

| (make-channel-introduction

| "9edb3f66fd807b096b48283debdcddccfea34bad"

| (openpgp-fingerprint

| "BBB0 2DDF 2CEA F6A8 0D1D E643 A2A0 6DF2 A33A 54FA"))))

`----

---

My manifest:

,----

| ;; This "manifest" file can be passed to 'guix package -m' to reproduce

| ;; the content of your profile. This is "symbolic": it only specifies

| ;; package names. To reproduce the exact same profile, you also need to

| ;; capture the channels being used, as returned by "guix describe".

| ;; See the "Replicating Guix" section in the manual.

|

| (specifications->manifest

| (list "gnome-themes-extra"

| "gnome-themes-standard"

| "adwaita-icon-theme"

| "guix"

| "guile"

| "font-ghostscript"

| "nss-certs"

| "fontconfig"

| "font-gnu-freefont"

| "font-dejavu"

| "glibc-locales"

| "vdirsyncer"

| "emacs-elfeed"

| "emacs-undo-tree"

| "emacs-dash"

| "emacs-treepy"

| "emacs-fsm"

| "emacs-guix"

| "emacs-next"

| "xcursor-themes"

| "emacs-evil"

| "emacs-evil-collection"

| "emacs-bluetooth"

| "emacs-mpdel"

| "emacs-elfeed-org"

| "emacs-vterm"

| "emacs-mu4e-alert"

| "mu"

| "emacs-writeroom"

| "emacs-evil-org"

| "emacs-org-super-agenda"

| "emacs-yasnippet-snippets"

| "emacs-yasnippet"

| "emacs-yaml-mode"

| "emacs-rustic"

| "emacs-php-mode"

| "emacs-eglot"

| "emacs-go-mode"

| "emacs-flycheck"

| "emacs-elixir-mode"

| "emacs-macrostep"

| "emacs-bug-hunter"

| "emacs-editorconfig"

| "emacs-dockerfile-mode"

| "emacs-magit"

| "emacs-forge"

| "emacs-excorporate"

| "emacs-corfu"

| "emacs-pcre2el"

| "emacs-embark"

| "emacs-orderless"

| "emacs-marginalia"

| "emacs-vertico"

| "emacs-consult"

| "emacs-doom-modeline"

| "emacs-all-the-icons"

| "emacs-solaire-mode"

| "emacs-helpful"

| "emacs-general"

| "emacs-which-key"

| "emacs-no-littering"))

`----

Hi

Am Donnerstag, dem 20.01.2022 um 00:03 +0000 schrieb John Hamelink:

Corrected your xsetroot invocation there :P

It turns out this issue is actually related to another issue of Guix'

Emacs on foreign distros, which is it not finding timezones. Since

I've found a permanent solution to both, I will close that bug and pat

myself on the back for doing so.

The main issue here is that foreign distros with systemd really cut

down on their use of environment variables, whereas Guix (System) makes

prominent use of them. In the case of the other bug, TZDIR was unset,

in the case of yours it was XCURSOR_PATH.

Writing an override configuration file with the following contents

fixed this for me, although I should specify that I previously only had

TZDIR set and bound XCURSOR_PATH interactively in the shell (I am

typing this just as I found the fix and haven't yet had the opportunity

to restart my X session).

Now one thing I don't quite get is the interaction with GNOME Shell.

With my current setup as detailed above, Emacs inherits whichever

cursor was set in GNOME at the time of launch for the entire process

duration -- i.e. even if the corresponding GNOME setting changes.  

I'm pretty sure in your setup with xsetroot there's nothing else

setting the cursor, so it ought to be displayed correctly after that.

If not, you might have to play around with cursor themes in other ways

(refer to [1]).

Cheers

[1] https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Cursor_themes

Hi Liliana,

Liliana Marie Prikler <liliana.prikler@ist.tugraz.at> writes:

Allow me to join in! That worked perfectly for me. Thank you :)

Best,

JH

Am Donnerstag, dem 20.01.2022 um 09:03 +0000 schrieb John Hamelink:

Good to hear. Note that you can also write to BUG-done@debbugs.gnu.org

yourself, you don't need my permission to do so ;) Anyway, done.

In order to avoid future instances of this issue, we should probably

drop a paragraph or two about it in the manual or (more likely) the

cookbook. I'll get to that when I do.

Cheers