configurable dwm?

fuscia · 2008-05-24 23:32:36

if i want to be able to configure dwm, what do i do? just download the package from suckless and do the typical untar, ./configure, make, make install thing? or, is it different in arch?

peets · 2008-05-24 23:48:07

use abs. On my computer, dwm is in "/var/abs/community/x11/dwm/".

Last edited by peets (2008-05-24 23:48:18)

fuscia · 2008-05-24 23:57:52

peets wrote:

use abs. On my computer, dwm is in "/var/abs/community/x11/dwm/".

i don't have that. i installed yaourt and have been using it some. i read through that abs page and frankly, it was somewhat of a mystery to me. no frame of reference, i guess.

sniffles · 2008-05-25 06:19:15

Well I could give you the exact commands to get an ABS tree on your machine but that'd be of no use since you wouldn't know what ABS actually is, nor would you know how to use it. The wiki contains various (scattered) information about it. [I'm rather new to Arch Linux myself so I had to deal with said wiki pages just a few days ago]

fuscia: I don't know if you know, but dwm is configured through a C-header file [C as in the C programming language]; there is no `traditional` RC-like configuration file [so you won't be able to use something like ~/.dwmrc]. After you unpack the dwm archive, you should see a `config.def.h` file in the extracted directory. You have to copy this to `config.h`; edit it to your liking and then run `make`; [there is no "configure" script; so running ./configure will give you an error]. Don't run `make install`; that's usually bad practice on distributions which provide package management. Just keep the generated executable in your home dir and run it from there.

The alternative to manually fetching the source, unpacking etc. is ABS which will automate some tasks for you, and you'll be able to make dwm available globally.

*I* chose to keep it somewhere in my home directory because:

#1. I'm still toying with the configuration file; it's easier to just go to the source directory and edit config.h and then run `make` than it would be to use the ABS.
#2. Sometimes, when using the ABS, I saw that config.h could not be stat`ed and the default configuration got used instead [I haven't looked too much into this, so it might be an error on my side.]
#3. The PKGBUILD contains `config.h` in its source option AND an md5 sum for it; so if you configure config.h as you're supposed to and then try to build the package you'll get md5 checksum errors. [which can be solved either by removing config.h from the sources option and the relevand md5 sum from the md5sums option *OR* by generating an md5 sum for your custom config.h file and updaing the PKGBUILD accordingly.]

Last edited by sniffles (2008-05-25 06:23:16)

fuscia · 2008-05-25 09:07:53

thanks, sniffles. that was a delightfully simple solution to just run it out of my home directory.

doesn't look all that different, but changing to urxvt and changing some of the key combos makes all the difference.

(note: one person found a nsfw ad on imagehost. ads show up in konqueror, but not in firefox or opera. i haven't seen anything but the usual stupid ads.)

Last edited by fuscia (2008-05-25 09:17:41)

sniffles · 2008-05-25 10:54:56

Glad I could help.

Indeed, I too changed key combos [and made dwm run urxvtc rather than xterm]. I also changed the colors though. And the font. Oh and made dwm use only 3 tags. Oh and.. :-)

shining · 2008-05-25 11:08:59

fuscia wrote:

if i want to be able to configure dwm, what do i do? just download the package from suckless and do the typical untar, ./configure, make, make install thing? or, is it different in arch?

dwm is one of the few packages where I did it this way, because it is much more practical.
By the way, I don't think it has configure Also, I believe it installs in /usr/local by default, which is perfect.
That way you have /usr prefix for packages managed by pacman and /usr/local for the few others.

Off-topic:
I knew your name and avatar as someone who was a very active forum poster. Then I look at your post counts, and only 67, wtf
Then I remembered that was probably on ubuntu forums, and indeed you have more than 2000 there.
And well I just found another confirmation : http://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=47479
Anyway, have fun with arch.

fuscia · 2008-05-25 14:00:29

shining wrote:

Off-topic:
I knew your name and avatar as someone who was a very active forum poster. Then I look at your post counts, and only 67, wtf
Then I remembered that was probably on ubuntu forums, and indeed you have more than 2000 there.
And well I just found another confirmation : http://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=47479
Anyway, have fun with arch.

yup, i used to post with this name and av at ubuntu forums. the av got banned (after using it for six months) and i now post as 'chucky chuckaluck'.

finferflu · 2008-05-25 18:07:06

I'm quite curious about why you got banned now, even because everyone knows that chucky chuckaluck is fuscia

Anyway, if I were you, I would use this opportunity to learn about ABS, and you actually have to install it with pacman. It's very straightforward. You were scared to install Arch at first, then you realised it wasn't difficult, the same is true for ABS.
You can't miss it, is one of the Arch core features that makes this distro so brilliant.

peets · 2008-05-26 03:33:03

mini intro to ABS:
the "abs" command is the part of ABS that synchronizes the local package repository with whatever's on the internet.
the "makepkg" command is the part of ABS that builds a program from source and turns it into a package that can be added to pacman via "pacman -U $package_name"

abs practical example:

I suck at neverball (I'm stuck at medhi's level no. 17). You get two "balls" (lives), after which you get a "game over" message, and you must go back through the level-picking menu to resume play. Remember I said I suck:I die all the time, and going through the game-over-new-game process was really annoying. So:

abs
cp /var/abs/extra/neverball /var/abs/local/neverball
cd /var/abs/local/neverball
makepkg --nobuild

... edit the neverball source to start with 99 balls instead of two (the new amount of balls is less humorous than the original one, but much more practical), then...

makepkg --noextract
sudo pacman -U neverball-1.4.0-4.pkg.tar.gz

... now I can play neverball with 99 balls!

Last edited by peets (2008-05-26 03:34:24)

fuscia · 2008-05-26 06:04:38

finferflu wrote:

I'm quite curious about why you got banned now, even because everyone knows that chucky chuckaluck is fuscia

i wasn't banned, but i was headed that way. the ever calm and rational kiwi gave me a permanent infraction (equal to banning, in my view). it was reversed, but that left me with no room. rather than trying to behave myself, i just decided to start over. someone figured it out, but decided to let it be.

Anyway, if I were you, I would use this opportunity to learn about ABS, and you actually have to install it with pacman. It's very straightforward. You were scared to install Arch at first, then you realised it wasn't difficult, the same is true for ABS.
You can't miss it, is one of the Arch core features that makes this distro so brilliant.

right now, i don't have a pressing need for it. i need to get my laptop dimming situation figured out and i've already got dwm working the way i want. need will make me brave.

edit: peets, thanks for that example. as i mentioned earlier, i have no frame of reference for a lot of this stuff, so it's hard to understand the scope when reading the wiki.

Last edited by fuscia (2008-05-26 07:02:06)

Onyros · 2008-05-30 11:58:42

I (unfortunately) embraced Awesome before DWM, and now, taking into account that Awesome is headed the bloaty route (from an old 2.3 testing release to the stable 2.3 RAM usage went from 4 to 10MB - and nothing justifies to me that it uses more than say, Flux or Openbox) and that I actually disagree with some of the choices they've made lately, I've been trying DWM again.

DWM is peachy, it suits my needs, obviously, but there are still a few quirks I need ironed out before I ditch Awesome completely for DWM. For instance... I'm having trouble piping info to DWM's statusbar, as I use a little customized script that grabs a few info from /proc (CPU speed, RAM usage, and date only)

Could anyone please help me translate it to DWMese?

This is my Awesome script

#!/bin/sh
PATH=/bin:/sbin:/usr/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/local/bin

delim=" | ";

print_status_info() {
    freq=`awk '/cpu MHz/{print int($4)}' < /proc/cpuinfo`;

    memtotal=`awk '/MemTotal/{print $2}' < /proc/meminfo`;
    memcached=`sed 4q /proc/meminfo | awk '/Cached/{print $2}'`;
    membuffers=`awk '/Buffers/{print $2}' < /proc/meminfo`;
    memory=$(( $memtotal/1024 ));
    memfree=`awk '/MemFree/{print $2}' < /proc/meminfo`;
    memfreez=$(( ($memtotal-$memfree) ));
    freemem=$(( ($memfreez-$membuffers-$memcached)/1024 ));

    ctime=`date '+%a, %d %b %H:%M'`;

    /bin/echo "0 widget_tell stat text CPU: ${freq}MHz${delim}$freemem MiB / $memory MiB${delim} $ctime";
}

while true; do
    print_status_info  | /usr/bin/awesome-client
    sleep 5;
done

Also, is the taglayouts patch available for DWM v4.9? If not, should I revert to 4.6 in order to use, as most people claim 4.7 was a really good version? And finally, is there any way for the floating windows to behave a little better, meaning, not overlapping whenever possible?

I'm sorry for taking the thread over, but I thought these few things didn't warrant opening a new one

Last edited by Onyros (2008-05-30 12:00:58)

Misfit138 · 2008-05-30 12:25:00

fuscia wrote:

i have no frame of reference for a lot of this stuff, so it's hard to understand the scope when reading the wiki.

Fuscia, what questions were you asking while reading ABS, that were not answered? I am interested in making it easier to understand for you.
I rewrote that page a long time ago because the original was poorly written and vague.
I *thought* I did a good job, but apparently some issues remain.

Arch Linux

#1 2008-05-24 23:32:36

configurable dwm?

#2 2008-05-24 23:48:07

Re: configurable dwm?

#3 2008-05-24 23:57:52

Re: configurable dwm?

#4 2008-05-25 06:19:15

Re: configurable dwm?

#5 2008-05-25 09:07:53

Re: configurable dwm?

#6 2008-05-25 10:54:56

Re: configurable dwm?

#7 2008-05-25 11:08:59

Re: configurable dwm?

#8 2008-05-25 14:00:29

Re: configurable dwm?

#9 2008-05-25 18:07:06

Re: configurable dwm?

#10 2008-05-26 03:33:03

Re: configurable dwm?

#11 2008-05-26 06:04:38

Re: configurable dwm?

#12 2008-05-30 11:58:42

Re: configurable dwm?

#13 2008-05-30 12:25:00

Re: configurable dwm?

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