What environment does an application run in if started via desktop shortcut?

Question

I have noticed that the environment variables I export in my .profile or .bashrc files are not available to applications started via a desktop shortcut. At least to my IDE. They are available if I start it from terminal.

Do I really have to modify /etc/profile to make the variables accessible to every program? I would prefer having them user-specific. I am sure there's a better way, but I lack the experience.

I am running Mint 11.

Thank you

Answer 1

Gnome runs a startup script in ~/.gnomerc at login time. If you add any env variables you want to this file, they should then be exposed to any desktop application you run. This is then a user specific solution.