January 2011 - xmonad

Understanding how to build and run xmonad
by Weeble 15 Jan '11

15 Jan '11

I've been using xmonad for over a year and I love it, but I am deathly afraid of editing my configuration or upgrading to new versions because I find it a deeply confusing and error-prone experience. I would love to understand it all a bit more so that I am better able to make proper use of xmonad and to benefit from all the good work people are doing on it. My latest trauma comes after getting exasperated with no full-screen in Google Chrome. Reading a page on the bug-tracker[1] led me to guess that the problem might be fixed if I upgraded to a more recent version of xmonad. Unfortunately, I could not remember how I originally installed xmonad - was it via apt-get, cabal or by fetching the source from darcs and building it by hand? Do some or all of these result in the same thing? Are some or all of these completely incompatible with each other? What about cabal-install and ghc? I am 80% certain that I installed ghc with apt-get. Does cabal come with it? I tried running "cabal update" and it complained about something being too new or too old. I fear I got myself into a terrible mess trying to install or uninstall things and I'm not terribly sure how to get to a known good state from there. It may be that I have here a very poor foundation for everything that follows, but I think I somehow got to a point where I could continue... I discovered that I have a darcs repository for xmonad and XMonadContrib. I went into each of these and did "darcs pull" and answered "a" when it asked which patches I wanted. I did "cabal install" in each in turn. xmonad built and installed itself somewhere, but XMonadContrib gave me an error: ~/xmonad/XMonadContrib$ cabal install Resolving dependencies... Configuring xmonad-0.9.2... Preprocessing library xmonad-0.9.2... Preprocessing executables for xmonad-0.9.2... Building xmonad-0.9.2... [1 of 8] Compiling XMonad.StackSet ( XMonad/StackSet.hs, dist/build/XMonad/StackSet.o ) [2 of 8] Compiling XMonad.Core ( XMonad/Core.hs, dist/build/XMonad/Core.o ) [3 of 8] Compiling XMonad.Layout ( XMonad/Layout.hs, dist/build/XMonad/Layout.o ) [4 of 8] Compiling XMonad.Operations ( XMonad/Operations.hs, dist/build/XMonad/Operations.o ) [5 of 8] Compiling XMonad.ManageHook ( XMonad/ManageHook.hs, dist/build/XMonad/ManageHook.o ) [6 of 8] Compiling XMonad.Config ( XMonad/Config.hs, dist/build/XMonad/Config.o ) [7 of 8] Compiling XMonad.Main ( dist/build/XMonad/Main.hs, dist/build/XMonad/Main.o ) [8 of 8] Compiling XMonad ( XMonad.hs, dist/build/XMonad.o ) Registering xmonad-0.9.2... [ 1 of 10] Compiling XMonad.StackSet ( XMonad/StackSet.hs, dist/build/xmonad/xmonad-tmp/XMonad/StackSet.o ) [ 2 of 10] Compiling XMonad.Core ( XMonad/Core.hs, dist/build/xmonad/xmonad-tmp/XMonad/Core.o ) [ 3 of 10] Compiling XMonad.Layout ( XMonad/Layout.hs, dist/build/xmonad/xmonad-tmp/XMonad/Layout.o ) [ 4 of 10] Compiling XMonad.Operations ( XMonad/Operations.hs, dist/build/xmonad/xmonad-tmp/XMonad/Operations.o ) [ 5 of 10] Compiling XMonad.ManageHook ( XMonad/ManageHook.hs, dist/build/xmonad/xmonad-tmp/XMonad/ManageHook.o ) [ 6 of 10] Compiling XMonad.Config ( XMonad/Config.hs, dist/build/xmonad/xmonad-tmp/XMonad/Config.o ) [ 7 of 10] Compiling XMonad.Main ( dist/build/xmonad/xmonad-tmp/XMonad/Main.hs, dist/build/xmonad/xmonad-tmp/XMonad/Main.o ) [ 8 of 10] Compiling Paths_xmonad ( dist/build/autogen/Paths_xmonad.hs, dist/build/xmonad/xmonad-tmp/Paths_xmonad.o ) [ 9 of 10] Compiling XMonad ( XMonad.hs, dist/build/xmonad/xmonad-tmp/XMonad.o ) [10 of 10] Compiling Main ( Main.hs, dist/build/xmonad/xmonad-tmp/Main.o ) Linking dist/build/xmonad/xmonad ... Installing library in /home/weeble/.cabal/lib/xmonad-0.9.2/ghc-6.12.1 Installing executable(s) in /home/weeble/.cabal/bin Registering xmonad-0.9.2... Configuring xmonad-contrib-0.9.1... Preprocessing library xmonad-contrib-0.9.1... Building xmonad-contrib-0.9.1... [ 1 of 212] Compiling XMonad.Util.StringProp ( XMonad/Util/StringProp.hs, dist/build/XMonad/Util/StringProp.o ) [ 2 of 212] Compiling XMonad.Util.Replace ( XMonad/Util/Replace.hs, dist/build/XMonad/Util/Replace.o ) [ 3 of 212] Compiling XMonad.Util.CustomKeys ( XMonad/Util/CustomKeys.hs, dist/build/XMonad/Util/CustomKeys.o ) [ 4 of 212] Compiling XMonad.Layout.ThreeColumns ( XMonad/Layout/ThreeColumns.hs, dist/build/XMonad/Layout/ThreeColumns.o ) [ 5 of 212] Compiling XMonad.Layout.StackTile ( XMonad/Layout/StackTile.hs, dist/build/XMonad/Layout/StackTile.o ) [ 6 of 212] Compiling XMonad.Layout.Spiral ( XMonad/Layout/Spiral.hs, dist/build/XMonad/Layout/Spiral.o ) [ 7 of 212] Compiling XMonad.Layout.Roledex ( XMonad/Layout/Roledex.hs, dist/build/XMonad/Layout/Roledex.o ) [ 8 of 212] Compiling XMonad.Layout.ResizableTile ( XMonad/Layout/ResizableTile.hs, dist/build/XMonad/Layout/ResizableTile.o ) [ 9 of 212] Compiling XMonad.Layout.OneBig ( XMonad/Layout/OneBig.hs, dist/build/XMonad/Layout/OneBig.o ) [ 10 of 212] Compiling XMonad.Layout.MultiToggle ( XMonad/Layout/MultiToggle.hs, dist/build/XMonad/Layout/MultiToggle.o ) [ 11 of 212] Compiling XMonad.Layout.MultiColumns ( XMonad/Layout/MultiColumns.hs, dist/build/XMonad/Layout/MultiColumns.o ) [ 12 of 212] Compiling XMonad.Layout.MosaicAlt ( XMonad/Layout/MosaicAlt.hs, dist/build/XMonad/Layout/MosaicAlt.o ) [ 13 of 212] Compiling XMonad.Layout.Mosaic ( XMonad/Layout/Mosaic.hs, dist/build/XMonad/Layout/Mosaic.o ) [ 14 of 212] Compiling XMonad.Layout.LayoutBuilder ( XMonad/Layout/LayoutBuilder.hs, dist/build/XMonad/Layout/LayoutBuilder.o ) [ 15 of 212] Compiling XMonad.Layout.HintedGrid ( XMonad/Layout/HintedGrid.hs, dist/build/XMonad/Layout/HintedGrid.o ) [ 16 of 212] Compiling XMonad.Layout.Simplest ( XMonad/Layout/Simplest.hs, dist/build/XMonad/Layout/Simplest.o ) [ 18 of 212] Compiling XMonad.Layout.Groups ( XMonad/Layout/Groups.hs, dist/build/XMonad/Layout/Groups.o ) [ 19 of 212] Compiling XMonad.Layout.GridVariants ( XMonad/Layout/GridVariants.hs, dist/build/XMonad/Layout/GridVariants.o ) [ 20 of 212] Compiling XMonad.Layout.Grid ( XMonad/Layout/Grid.hs, dist/build/XMonad/Layout/Grid.o ) [ 21 of 212] Compiling XMonad.Layout.FixedColumn ( XMonad/Layout/FixedColumn.hs, dist/build/XMonad/Layout/FixedColumn.o ) [ 22 of 212] Compiling XMonad.Layout.Dishes ( XMonad/Layout/Dishes.hs, dist/build/XMonad/Layout/Dishes.o ) [ 24 of 212] Compiling XMonad.Layout.Cross ( XMonad/Layout/Cross.hs, dist/build/XMonad/Layout/Cross.o ) [ 25 of 212] Compiling XMonad.Layout.Column ( XMonad/Layout/Column.hs, dist/build/XMonad/Layout/Column.o ) [ 26 of 212] Compiling XMonad.Layout.Circle ( XMonad/Layout/Circle.hs, dist/build/XMonad/Layout/Circle.o ) [ 27 of 212] Compiling XMonad.Hooks.XPropManage ( XMonad/Hooks/XPropManage.hs, dist/build/XMonad/Hooks/XPropManage.o ) [ 28 of 212] Compiling XMonad.Util.Timer ( XMonad/Util/Timer.hs, dist/build/XMonad/Util/Timer.o ) XMonad/Util/Timer.hs:38:2: Not in scope: `xfork' cabal: Error: some packages failed to install: xmonad-contrib-0.9.1 failed during the building phase. The exception was: ExitFailure 1 Have I done something wrong? At first I had even more problems, but I believe they were caused by my reckless use of "cabal install $SOMETHING" to try to fix previous problems, but which just ended up stacking more and more errors about conflicting versions. I got rid of these by doing "ghc-pkg list" and "ghc-pkg unregister --user $SOMETHING" for everything that turned up in the list of user packages. I have a few questions: 1. How can I get rid of everything and start again? 2. What do ghc-pkg and cabal install actually do, and where do they put things? Does one of them call the other? 3. When I install xmonad, where does it go? 4. What is the relationship between the xmonad executable and my xmonad.hs file? 5. When does xmonad.hs get read and processed? Every time xmonad runs? Every time I edit it? Only when I do something to specifically request it? 6. When there's an error in my xmonad.hs, what am I left with? Does xmonad behave as it did with the last known good xmonad.hs? Or does it use some sort of safe configuration? 7. What should I do in the future to avoid getting myself in a mess? Assuming that I will from time to time want to at least try out the latest version from darcs, what should I get using apt-get, what should I get with cabal, what (if anything) should I download source distributions for and what should I get from darcs? Wow, that' a lot of stuff, and I'm not even asking about debugging changes to my xmonad.hs. I'll leave that for another day when I've got a better handle on all this basic getting-it-all-up-and-running stuff. Many thanks for your patience. Weeble. [1] - http://code.google.com/p/xmonad/issues/detail?id=339

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Tall Layout with Primary on the Right
by Eyal Erez 13 Jan '11

13 Jan '11

Hi, Currently, the Tall layout puts the primary window on the right. I would like the primary to be on the left. Is there another layout that achieves this? Thanks -- *Eyal Erez <**oneself(a)gmail.com* <oneself(a)gmail.com>*>* There are 10 types of people, those who know binary and those who don't.

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Set Window Maximum Width
by Eyal Erez 13 Jan '11

13 Jan '11

Hi, I use a fairly large monitor (24" widescreen). Most applications I open, are too large when they take up the entire space, and I end up needing to open another application (like a terminal) to shrink them down. I was wondering if there's a way to set a maximum window width. So if only one application is running, it would float in the middle of the workspace? It would be a plus if this size can be set per application type (e.g. window class). Thank you,

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Borders visible when switching workspaces with noBorders
by Israel Jacques 11 Jan '11

11 Jan '11

Hello everyone. When switching from a workspace (with "noBorders") to a a workspace with or without borders ("noBorders"), the focused border on the workspace with "noBorders" is displayed briefly before switching. Is this expected behavior? I haven't combed through the source code to verify as my Haskell is embarrassingly bad. To reproduce: 1. Open a window x in a workspace i with "noBorders" 2. Open another window y in a different workspace j with or without "noBorders" (doesn't matter) 3. Switch between the two. 1. From this, you'll notice that window x in workspace i will have borders. After switching to workspace j, everything is normal. 2. Switching workspace j to workspace i is normal. Window x does not appear to have borders. Version: xmonad 0.9.1 (Darcs) with XMonadContrib (Darcs)

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XMonad.Operations.windows oddities
by Brandon S Allbery KF8NH 08 Jan '11

08 Jan '11

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 1) Is the unconditional restackWindows in XMonad.Operations.windows really necessary? That's the root cause of the oddball window reorderings when floating windows are given focus. If a floating window has focus I would simply move it to the top of the z-order (raiseWindow), not reorder the whole stack in what amounts to an arbitrary way. 2) I find myself wondering if the fact that the border size is added to a window's rectangle *before* scaleRationalRect is applied to it is related to the occasionally observed phenomenon of floating windows being resized upon gaining focus. Certainly it is sketchy. - -- brandon s. allbery [linux,solaris,freebsd,perl] allbery(a)kf8nh.com system administrator [openafs,heimdal,too many hats] allbery(a)ece.cmu.edu electrical and computer engineering, carnegie mellon university KF8NH -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.11 (Darwin) Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org/ iEYEARECAAYFAk0o3BsACgkQIn7hlCsL25WoPQCgjl9f4Eyi1hlaqDY3n8TcOw66 938AoMNpz4qRLz0EboEHl+YLBwronn4Y =Sgc+ -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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Re: [xmonad] toggle to last window/workspace
by Greg Weber 07 Jan '11

07 Jan '11

Thanks for the response! I had already looked at those modules but I realize I was just configuring things incorrectly. XMonad.Actions.CycleWindows and XMonad.Actions.CycleRecentWS did the trick. I came across the key check and found it helpful. startupHook = return () >> checkKeymap myConfig myKeys I suppose there are probably situations where one does not want a warning, but it would be nice to run the keycheck by default.

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java-swing-application-focus-patch.dpatch
by Tony Morris 06 Jan '11

06 Jan '11

Hello, Please find attached a patch for xmonad-contrib that implements appropriate focus-handling for Java swing applications when used in ~/.xmonad/xmonad.hs. As discussed in irc.freenode.net/#xmonad. -- Tony Morris http://tmorris.net/

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toggle to last window/workspace
by Greg Weber 06 Jan '11

06 Jan '11

Hello! Long time user, first time on this list! I have looked through xmonad contrib and google for the ability to toggle to the last window, but haven't found it yet. The exact behavior I am looking for is something that traditional window managers do- Alt+Tab on Windows. This is most useful for smaller screens where all the programs are maximized so that unfocused programs are hidden. I have a workspace with 3 windows: A, B, C ..., and a is focused. I switch focus to B. I would like a shortcut to switch focus to the previous focused window (in this case A). If I use that shortcut again I will focus to the previously focused window (window B). I could go back and forth over time and never even notice window C. ideally with Alt+Tab holding down Alt (Alt+Tab+Tab) would reach window C. Is there an extension for this already? If not, can someone give me a pointer to how I would implement this? I am also interested in a similar ability, but for switching between workspaces. Thanks, Greg Weber

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Issue 425 in xmonad: XMonad.Layout.LayoutHints serious bugs
by codesite-noreply＠google.com 03 Jan '11

03 Jan '11

Status: New Owner: ---- New issue 425 by kevind...(a)gmail.com: XMonad.Layout.LayoutHints serious bugs http://code.google.com/p/xmonad/issues/detail?id=425 What steps will reproduce the problem? 1. import XMonad.Layout.LayoutHints 2. layoutHook = avoidStruts $ layoutHintsToCenter(noFrillsDeco shrinkText myTheme (Tall 1 0.05 0.5)), 3. <try switching focus several times> What is the expected output? What do you see instead? It's expected to try to fill gaps without creating overlaps, but instead it creates lots of overlaps between each window and decoration of the next window, plus after some switching of focus windows get needless resizing, then sometimes totally wrong, overlapping layout and finally, disappearance of windows with disappearance of their processes. What version of the product are you using? On what operating system? xmonad 0.9.1 Linux 2.6.32-27-generic #49-Ubuntu SMP Wed Dec 1 23:52:12 UTC 2010 i686 Are you using an xmonad.hs? Please attach it and the output of "xmonad --recompile". Yes. Afraid to check for output now since browser window could be taken off as well. At least there were no error window. Please provide any additional information below. I remember that before, when I tried subj with simpler config, there was only one problem: it overlapped each window with next window's 2-pixel thick border.

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dzen2 not recognized by avoidStruts on non-rectangular desktop
by Samir Unni 03 Jan '11

03 Jan '11

Hi, I'm trying to use avoidStruts with dzen2 instances on a non-rectangular desktop. I have a 1920x1200 monitor on the left and a 1440x900 monitor on the right. The top edges of the monitors are aligned, so there is a 1440x300 area of dead space below the right monitor. I have 4 dzen2 instances, one anchored to both the left and right sides of the top and bottom edges of the 1440x900 screen. The two instances at the top of the screen are always recognized by avoidStruts, and windows do not overlap them. But when I have the 1920x1200 monitor connected, the instances anchored to the bottom edge (i.e., those above the dead space) are overlapped by windows. I am fairly sure it's a bug in the code, as when I disconnect the 1920x1200 monitor, I have no such problems. I'm running 64-bit Arch Linux with xmonad-darcs & xmonad-contrib-darcs installed from the AUR, though this is also an issue with xmonad 0.9.1 from the repositories. My xmonad.hs is attached. Thank you!!

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