XDG_CONFIG_HOME is not respected

I'm using the lightdm display manager to run xfce4-session.

lightdm sources ~/.profile and ~/.xprofile. I'm using this to set XDG_CONFIG_HOME to $HOME/config (note the missing dot).

Via ps eww I've verified that in the processes of xfce4-session, xfsettingsd, xfdesktop, etc., XDG_CONFIG_HOME indeed has the correct value. However, everything still reads from the default ~/.config directory, causing the default configuration to be used.

I am on XFCE 4.16.

As a temporary workaround I've symlinked .config to config. This is really not my preferred solution, though.

I believe I have narrowed it down to xfconfd, which is started by dbus, not receiving XDG_CONFIG_HOME properly. Indeed. running dbus-update-activation-environment --systemd XDG_CONFIG_HOME="$XDG_CONFIG_HOME" as an initialization step causes everything to work as indtended.