SCWM.muse

   1 #title Scheme Your Windows
   2
   3 * Installing SCWM
   4
   5 ** Dependencies
   6
   7 *** Required
   8
   9  - [[http://www.gnu.org/software/guile][Guile]] 1.8.0+
  10  - IMLib 1.x (in Debian imlib11-dev)
  11
  12 *** Optional
  13
  14  - [[ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/guile-gtk/guile-gtk-0.60.tar.gz][Guile-GTK]] 0.60 for dialog support. Guile-GTK 2.x and scwm are not
  15    compatible yet
  16
  17 ** Downloading and Building
  18
  19 A working version of SCWM can be obtained from
  20 [[http://sourceforge.net/cvs/?group_id=225][sourceforge CVS]]. Compilation is much more straightforward than one
  21 would suspect from a project so old (thanks to dsmith for doing the
  22 painful parts of unbitrotting). The standard autoconf sequence of
  23 commands should work.
  24
  25 <example>
  26 ./autogen.sh
  27 ./configure
  28 make
  29 sudo make install
  30 </example>
  31
  32 ** Running
  33
  34 The directory =sample.scwmrc= has a few sample SCWM
  35 configurations. =system.scwmrc= and =sample.scwmrc= both work fairly well;
  36 I have yet to test the others. If not using =system.scwmrc= it is useful
  37 to at least include the bits that enable debugging.
  38
  39 <src lang="scheme">
  40 (define debug #t)
  41
  42 (if debug
  43     (begin
  44       (add-hook! module-loaded-hook display-module-loaded)
  45       (set! %load-verbosely #t)
  46       (debug-enable 'debug 'backtrace)
  47       (read-enable 'positions)))
  48 </src>
  49
  50 SCWM will attempt to load =system.scwmrc= by default, but this can be
  51 overridden with the =-f= option. The default =system.scwmrc= loads user
  52 config from a series of files in =~/.scwm/=.
  53
  54 ** Hacking
  55
  56 *** XNested Setup
  57
  58 The easiest way to hack on SCWM is to run it inside of Xnest.
  59
  60 <example>
  61 Xnest :1 &
  62 scwm --display :1 --debug # --debug makes X requests synchronous
  63 </example>
  64
  65 *** GDS for Interaction
  66
  67 SCWM has an emacs interaction mode that communicates with the window
  68 manager using X window properties, but the emacs side of the code
  69 doesn't quite work, and GDS is featureful enough now to be used to
  70 interact with scwm. Using GDS makes hacking scwm quite a bit
  71 easier. **GDS requires a Guile built with threads to work properly
  72 (the version in Debian is built *without* threading).**
  73
  74 **** scwmrc code
  75
  76 The following code should be in your scwmrc somewhere.
  77
  78 <src lang="scheme">
  79 (use-modules (ice-9 gds-client)
  80              (ice-9 threads))
  81
  82 ;;; GDS thread (in case it must be killed during debugging, ...)
  83 (define cke-gds-thread #f)
  84
  85 (define (connect-to-debugging-server)
  86   (set! cke-gds-thread
  87         (call-with-new-thread (lambda () (run-utility))))
  88   cke-gds-thread)
  89 </src>
  90
  91 After defining you can either use =scwmrepl= to run
  92 =(connect-to-debugging-server)= after starting a GDS server, or simply
  93 add =(connect-to-debugging-server)= to the config if one will always be
  94 running.
  95
  96 **** Emacs config
  97
  98 I wrote [[http://darcs.unknownlamer.org/site-emacs/init.d/guile-debug.el][a bit of elisp]] to simplify setting up a scratch buffer for
  99 interaction with guile.
 100
 101 <src lang="emacs-lisp">
 102 (require 'gds)
 103 (require 'gds-server)
 104 (require 'gds-scheme)
 105
 106 (defvar guile-scratch-buffer-name "*guile-scratch*"
 107   "Name of the Guile evaluation scratch buffer")
 108
 109 (defun make-guile-scratch-buffer ()
 110   (interactive)
 111   (let ((scratch-buf (generate-new-buffer guile-scratch-buffer-name)))
 112     (switch-to-buffer scratch-buf)
 113     (scheme-mode)
 114     (gds-auto-associate-buffer)))
 115 </src>
 116
 117 If you were already running a debugging client process you will need
 118 to choose the process to associate the buffer with; =ps= will tell you
 119 the PID of scwm.
 120
 121 **** Known Issues
 122
 123 Occasionally evaluating an expression or viewing a backtrace will make
 124 scwm lockup. My understanding is that scwm is not threadsafe, and
 125 there are some evil issues that will take a while to solve. GDS works
 126 well enough for now; if I can't make GDS completely reliable I shall
 127 unbitrot the scwm emacs interaction mode (unless someone else beats me
 128 to it, *hint hint*).