I’m gradually switching from Gnome to i3, and figuring out how to translate some settings that Gnome was managing (e.g. via gsettings or the gnome tweak tool) into system-wide config files.
For example, I like using emacs-like keybindings in gtk apps (e.g. chromium), and had been running
gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.interface gtk-key-theme "Emacs"
to configure this. According to the arch wiki, gtk apps will look for system-wide settings in:
/etc/gtk-2.0/gtkrc
/etc/gtk-3.0/settings.ini
I created those files using environment.etc in my nixos config, but my settings weren’t picked up. I finally found an approach that works, and incorporated it into my config.
environment.extraInit = ''
export XDG_CONFIG_DIRS="/etc/xdg:$XDG_CONFIG_DIRS"
'';
environment.etc."xdg/gtk-2.0/gtkrc".source = ''
gtk-key-theme-name = "Emacs"
'';
environment.etc."xdg/gtk-3.0/settings.ini".source = ''
[Settings]
gtk-key-theme-name = Emacs
'';
This works, but is there a cleaner way?