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Description of Problem: /etc/X11/xdm/Xsession loads various applications defaults from /etc/X11/xinit/Xresources (which is a change by itself as 7.1 was using /etc/X11/Xresources, and I failed to notice anywhere a warning that this will happen but maybe I was not observant enough) and from $HOME/.Xresources. This is fine and dandy with this exception that current versions of 'rxvt' seem to be just looking at $HOME/.Xdefaults and they do not even run that through preprocessor, like 'xrdb -load ...', or 'xrdb -merge', would do but read that "as is". Whatever 'xrdb -query' shows for rxvt is totally disregarded. This could be even construed as a "feature" if not that small detail that this grows a number of "dot-files" (well, 'rxvt' will look at $HOME/.Xresources but only if $HOME/.Xdefaults is absent) and is not really documented that way. OTOH 'strace' does not seem to indicate that a consultation with /usr/lib/X11/app-defaults/Rxvt is even attempted man-page claims to the contrary. This is a "feature" because in $HOME/.Xresources one can use preprocessor macros for various purposes and leave $HOME/.Xdefaults for the sole use of 'rxvt' but I am not sure if this was really intended. :-)
you may try rxvt-2.7.8-1
Hm, kind of difficult to do that. The last one I see in rawhide is rxvt-2.7.6-4 (or there are many, out of sync, rawhide depositories or I should look for it somewhere else?).
What's the latest status of this?
'rxvt' from "skipjack", i.e. rxvt-2.7.8-3, will still read and try to interpret ~/.Xdefaults directly (just use strace to see that), which may be not the greatest thing if this was meant to be preprocessed first, but at least it pays attention what is provided by xrdb. If ~/.Xdefaults is missing then it is pretty insistent on trying to open it or ~/.Xdefaults-<host_name>. My strace shows 504 such attempts. :-) OTOH, contrary to what manpage says in RESOURCES section, a presence of ~/.Xresources file is totally ignored.
The is XGetDefault() from the X11 library, which tries to open those files.
Oh, I should add that with rxvt-2.7.8-3 defaults from /usr/lib/X11/app-defaults/Rxvt seem to be actually used in a contrast to an older version from the original report.
Xresources and .Xresources are the official locations in XFree86 4.x. Anything using .Xdefaults should be changed to use Xresources. Any backward compatiibility hacks that are in place by upstream will remain in place, however it is entirely possible upstream may change this, so Xresources shoulds be migrated to.
Actually.... my bad. Upstream _did_ change this - 2 years ago. .Xdefaults died over 2 years ago and we kept it around for legacy compatibility for a while. It is gone now. Closing NOTABUG