[svlug] Adding environment variable to a shell and it's

[Ian Kluft]

>From: Roland Krause <rokrau at yahoo.com>
>thanks for the advice. Unfortunately I cant/"dont want to" change the
>program that gets started. Seems therefore the wrapper script is the
>only way of dealing with the situation. I have this implemented and it
>works fine. Should be the same in KDE and Gnome, a shell wrapper is a
>shell wrapper after all. 
>
>Under the "evil" OS there is a way to set environment variables. In the
>worst case one has to relogin to make them active. Something like that
>was what I was looking for. 
>
>I am going to keep looking :-) 

OK, so it sounds like you'd like a way to change the environment on a
GUI program already running now on your desktop.

Linux/Unix don't provide a direct way to do that.  Each program can only
modify its own environment once it's started.  So the only way would be
if the program already has a mechanism to do this.  I've never heard of
this kind of functionality before - but that doesn't mean no one has
done it.  It may be an interesting thing to develop as a patch for the
major GUI environments like KDE and Gnome - sort of a "guru mode".

Since you haven't mentioned what feature you wanted to change, I guess the
next best thing I can suggest for now is to hunt around the GUI pull-down
menus and preferences for a way to set the specific feature you have in
mind.  Then use a wrapper script next time you run it.