jtojnar  I still need to figure out why the upstream session files do not work though
halfline yea you'd think the session file would just have Exec=gnome-session in it or whatever
         so as long as PATH was right 
jtojnar  at the moment we execute this monstrosity https://paste.gnome.org/pf4v67irc
         would starting GDM with the variables work, or is the user session launched in a different environment like the greeter?
halfline woah that's quite a script.  yea user session doesn't get the GDM's environment
         you could use pam_env or ~/.config/environment.d/foo.conf to adjust user environment
         well maybe prefix it with a number
         see man environment.d
         or of course you've got a big script
         so you could set environment variables in it
jtojnar  and I suppose running GNOME with a different WM (XMonad) will not work either
halfline as you already do i guess
         no, GNOME is gnome-shell really
         you can't really have gnome without gnome-shell
         but you can tweak gnome-shell with extensions
         there is an xmonad like extension for gnome-shell i think
         (i mean you could run bits of gnome with xmonad but things won't work right, like screen locking etc
jtojnar  I thin some of our users are running XMonad with GNOME Shell
         but I am not sure how that works
halfline sounds unpossible ! 
         </ralph wiggum>
         well i guess yo ucould have two screens 0.0 and 0.1
         and run gnome-shell on 0.0
         and run xmonad on 0.1
         but you souldn't be able to move windows between the two screens
         s/souldn't/wouldn/
jtojnar  apparently, they just mean GNOME services, not the whole shell https://wiki.haskell.org/Xmonad/Using_xmonad_in_Gnome#Gnome3
         or flashback (but we don't have that packaged)
         what is supposed to run xdg-user-dirs-update?
halfline it ships an autostart file
jtojnar  and I suppose pulseaudio can be socket activated
halfline yea that's what upstream pulse recommends these days in fact
jtojnar  not sure what https://paste.gnome.org/pf4v67irc#line-31 is supposed to do
         and launching dbus session (line 45)  will gnome-session take care of
         xrdb-merge probably too
         (line 60)
         what about letting systemd know, graphical-target is on (line 89)?
         maybe using presession hook?
halfline line 31 is restarting the scrip with the output connected to the systemd journal
         to make sure its logged properly i suppose
         line 45 should indeed be handled by gdm before that runs
         or by gnome-session after that runs
         but it's harmless since it won't run because of the test on line 44
         i don't think we do xrdb -merge anywhere these days
         it's affected start up time in the past since it invokes the c preprocessor
         and it's only used by really old applications like xterm
         and some versions of emacs
         you're just trying to clean the script up i guess