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ancleessen4

Member

From: Luxembourg

Registered: 2009-11-22

Posts: 121

Website

Preparing for dwm install

I am preparing to install dwm.
I uderstand I have to install from source if I want to be able to cutomise the wm.
From what I have read (for example here: http://www.xsnake.net/howto/dwm/dwm-eng.php) I would do the following;

Download dwm from their site;
wget http://dl.suckless.org/dl/dwm/dwm-5.8.2.tar.gz

cd /path/to/dwm-5.8.2.tar.gz
tar zxvf dwm-5.8.2.tar.gz
make clean install (as root)

cp config.def.h config.h

tweak config.h then;

make clean install (as root)

Is this an accurate summary?

Procyon

Member

Registered: 2008-05-07

Posts: 1,819

Re: Preparing for dwm install

Don't install it without tweaking:

Download dwm from their site;
wget http://dl.suckless.org/dl/dwm/dwm-5.8.2.tar.gz

cd /path/to/dwm-5.8.2.tar.gz
tar zxvf dwm-5.8.2.tar.gz
make clean install (as root)

cp config.def.h config.h

tweak config.h then;

make clean install (as root)

Because you're not using a package manager and you don't want to clutter your /usr/bin directory, you could try not "installing" it at all.

Just type make not as root, it will put the binary in the current directory (the source directory)
then after you set up your own ~/bin directory (mkdir ~/bin and adjust your PATH variable in .bashrc: PATH=~/bin:$PATH) symlink the binary to a place you can launch it:
ln -sf $PWD/dwm ~/bin

You could even forgo those last two steps, and every time you want to run dwm (which is probably only in .xinitrc), just put the source directory and binary name:
~/dwm-1.2.3/dwm &

jasonwryan

Anarchist

From: .nz

Registered: 2009-05-09

Posts: 30,424

Website

Re: Preparing for dwm install

Unless you have a very specific reason for not wanting pacman to know about dwm, use the ABS method described in the wiki.

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thayer

Fellow

From: Vancouver, BC

Registered: 2007-05-20

Posts: 1,560

Website

Re: Preparing for dwm install

Call me lazy, but I don't bother with a PKGBUILD either.  I also don't 'install' it.  I simply keep the dwm source in ~/.dwm, run 'make' and then just add something like this to my ~/.xinitrc:

exec ck-launch-session ~/.dwm/dwm

Of course, you'll need to either modify the config.mk file with the correct paths to X11INC and X11LIB, or just append them to the make command:

make X11INC=/usr/include/X11 X11LIB=/usr/lib/X11

It's such a small program that it's almost more work to use the ABS method.

Last edited by thayer (2011-05-23 00:37:08)

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