Re: [xmonad] register XMonad as window manager with X

Tom Davis [2011.11.07 1122 -0500]:

On Nov 7, 2011, at 10:29 AM, "Allen S. Rout" wrote:

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On 11/05/2011 07:32 PM, Brandon Allbery wrote:

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You're running stock 0.9.1/0.9.2, which is effectively 2 years old at this point. Upgrade to the darcs version;

..? Really? Can't you just do a quarterly drop or something? Or even annual?

I definitely agree. I had no idea until recently that the Fedora package the xmonad site linked me to was effectively obsolete. Or, rather, that darcs was under active development since. Now I'm not sure what will happen if I upgrade to darcs, if it's worth it, etc.

I guess I don't consider "bleeding edge" to be synonymous with "the past two years of development." If darcs is canonical and stable at this point, it should be presented as the preferred installation method at the very least.

Let me address the two separate points here: (1) No official release in 2 years: This makes me a bit uneasy about the future of xmonad, as it seems the original authors have lost interest in the project. In only hope, and there is some evidence for that, that the community that has built up around xmonad includes people who are willing to ensure the survival of this excellent piece of software. In any case, Gwern Branwen keeps nagging on the list that V1.0 should finally be released. I hope he succeeds. (2) Running the darcs version: Wanting to contribute code here and there shortly after switching to xmonad, I was advised to run the darcs version as opposed to the then official release, in order not to duplicate work done by others or introduce incompatible patches. I was concerned about stability (in terms of API and in terms of no crashes), but I was assured that both are very stable even in the darcs version - the only things that change are under-the-hood bugfixes and addition of new modules. I have learned over the years that this assessment was entirely correct - solid and stable as a rock. In particular, if you're worried about your configuration file being hosed as a result of pulling in the latest changes - that's almost guaranteed not to happen because the xmonad community is in general extremely careful not to introduce API changes that break existing setups. Bottom line: I highly recommend running the darcs version, particularly given the current state of affairs regarding point (1). I hope this helps. Cheers, Norbert