All the GTK theme programs are doing is sending a signal to
all desktop windows that basically says "reload the gtkrc
file"
Now I see the problem; thank you for the precise pointer.
Here is
a patch against adesklets 0.4.10; I tested it with
gtk-chtheme myself, and it works fine on my side.
The complete absence of any output is explained by the fact
that adesklets detected the GTK notification as a perfectly
normal and well-formed request for exit; this also explains
why you were returned an empy
$HOME/.adesklets file. When you point
out that:
I don't know why adesklets is even bothering with such a
message. It should be like all other non-gtk apps and
simply ignore it. Given that, there is no reason that
adesklets should need to be re-invoked at all. It should
simply be unaffected by the event.
You are right that adesklets should be shielded against such
messages (hence the patch), but the very use of a function
such as
gdk_event_send_clientmessage_toall() for
notifying theme change is wrong. Sending unsollicited
messages to all top-level windows is a very questionable
practice, especially when simple mechanisms (atom check?) to
identify windows that "speak" GTK are that straightforward to
implement.