Comment 5 for bug 20507

(In reply to comment #0)
> As documented above, GNOME should be calling xrdb with -nocpp to dramatically
> increase startup time. I'll be doing this with all the xinit scripts tomorrow,
> but gnome-session needs to be changed (as well as gnome-settings-daemon and gdm,
> AFAICT) to call it with -nocpp also.
>
> I think we can count the number of people with C preprocessor directives in
> their resource files on one hand.

Unfortunately no. The capplets-data package installs some resource files in
/etc/gnome/config which rely on the C preprocessor to expand some variables like
BACKGROUND, FOREGROUNT, FONT, etc. to their actual values. Those seem to be
merged automatically somewhere in the GNOME startup procedure by
gnome-settings-daemon. Removing the cpp causes many essential settings in the
xrdb to have an invalid value, so most programs that rely on those settings
malfunction (like xterm, only running with black text on black background, or
urxvt not starting at all). See also the forum thread from
http://www.ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=64477 for some more examples.