2021-10-27
xmonad and xmonad-contrib 0.17.0 are available

New versions of xmonad and xmonad-contrib have been released. Check out our download page for instructions on where to get them.

It’s been a little over 3 years since xmonad 0.15, and a little over 2 years since xmonad-contrib 0.16. A lot has happened. This post is an overview of the most important changes. To celebrate this milestone, we announce a contest for a new xmonad logo.

Last but not least, we’re looking to raise funds to keep the XMonad project and community alive and relevant in the next decade. With the final X.Org Server 21.1 release being announced today, there are some obvious challenges ahead of us.

Table of Contents

• xmonad 0.17.0
  • Major Breaking Changes
  • Selected Features and Improvements
• xmonad-contrib 0.17.0
  • Major Breaking Changes
  • Selected Features and Improvements
• Logo Contest
• Looking for Funding

xmonad 0.17.0

This release includes 156 non-merge commits by 22 contributors! For a full summary of all the changes, see xmonad’s CHANGES.md file.

Major Breaking Changes

• util/GenerateManpage.hs is no longer distributed in the tarball.

Selected Features and Improvements

• Migrated X.L.LayoutCombinators.(|||) into XMonad.Layout, providing the ability to directly jump to a layout with the JumpToLayout message.

• Improved handling of XDG directories.

  1. If all three of xmonad’s environment variables (XMONAD_DATA_DIR, XMONAD_CONFIG_DIR, and XMONAD_CACHE_DIR) are set, use them.

  2. If there is a build script called build (see here for usage examples) or configuration xmonad.hs in ~/.xmonad, set all three directories to ~/.xmonad.

  3. Otherwise, use the xmonad directory in XDG_DATA_HOME, XDG_CONFIG_HOME, and XDG_CACHE_HOME (or their respective fallbacks). These directories are created if necessary.

  In the cases of 1. and 3., the build script or executable is expected to be in the config dir.

  Additionally, the xmonad config binary and intermediate object files were moved to the cache directory (only relevant if using XDG or XMONAD_CACHE_DIR).

• Recompilation now detects stack.yaml (can be a symlink) alongside xmonad.hs and switches to using stack ghc.

  Additionally, deprecation warnings during recompilation are no longer suppressed. These can still be suppressed manually using an OPTIONS_GHC pragma with -Wno-deprecations.

xmonad-contrib 0.17.0

This release includes 582 non-merge commits by 57 contributors! For a full summary of all the changes, see xmonad-contrib’s CHANGES.md file.

Major Breaking Changes

• All modules that export bitmap fonts as their default

  • If xmonad is compiled with XFT support (the default), use an XFT font instead. The previous default expected an X11 misc font (PCF), which is not supported in pango 1.44 anymore and thus some distributions have stopped shipping these.

• All modules still exporting a defaultFoo constructor

  • All of these were now removed. You can use the re-exported def from Data.Default instead.

• XMonad.Hooks.StatusBar, XMonad.Hooks.StatusBar.PP (previously XMonad.Hooks.DynamicLog) and XMonad.Util.Run

  • spawnPipe no longer uses binary mode handles and defaults to the current locale encoding instead, xmonadPropLog and xmonadPropLog' now encode their input string in UTF-8, and dynamicLogString no longer encodes its output in UTF-8. When these functions are used together, everything should continue to work as it always has, but in isolation behaviour might change.

    To get the old spawnPipe behaviour, spawnPipeWithNoEncoding can now be used, and spawnPipeWithUtf8Encoding was added as well to force UTF-8 regardless of locale.

  • XMonad.Hooks.DynamicLog will be deprecated soon in favor of XMonad.Hooks.StatusBar which offers a nicer and easier to use interface for status bars. Laptop users who (dis)connect external monitors dynamically should definitely try this new interface: XMonad.Hooks.DynamicBars has been deprecated already.

• XMonad.Hooks.EwmhDesktops

  • It is no longer recommended to use standalone hooks directly:

    Instead of ewmhDesktopsStartup, ewmhDesktopsLogHook(Custom) and ewmhDesktopsEventHook(Custom), users should now use the ewmh combinator. The Custom variants have been replaced by a more composable interface which now also allows simply marking windows that request focus as urgent instead of immediately focusing them.

    Instead of fullscreenEventHook, use ewmhFullscreen, which now advertises fullscreen support to applications, fixing fullscreen in mpv and many others.

• XMonad.Hooks.Script

  • execScriptHook now has an X constraint (was: MonadIO), due to changes in how the xmonad core handles XDG directories.

• XMonad.Actions.WorkspaceNames

  • The type of getWorkspaceNames was changed to fit into the new ppRename field of PP.

Selected Features and Improvements

• XMonad.Actions.EasyMotion

  A new module that allows selection of visible screens using a key chord—inspired by vim-easymotion. See the animation in the vim-easymotion repo to get some idea of the functionality of this module.

• XMonad.Prompt.OrgMode

  A prompt for interacting with org-mode. It can be used to quickly save TODOs, NOTEs, and the like with the additional capability to schedule/deadline a task, or use the primary selection as the contents of the note.

• XMonad.Hooks.StatusBar

  A new module, providing a nicer, composable interface for status bars that replaces XMonad.Hooks.DynamicLog and XMonad.Hooks.DynamicBars. Supports property-based as well as pipe-based status bars, multiple status bars (Xinerama), and takes care of restarting the bars as needed.

• XMonad.Hooks.Rescreen

  A new module, providing custom hooks for screen (xrandr) configuration changes. These are used internally by XMonad.Hooks.StatusBar to restart status bars/systrays after xrandr, and can also be used to invoke xrandr or autorandr when an output is (dis)connected.

• XMonad.Util.Hacks

  A collection of hacks and fixes that should be easily accessible to users, like a fix for the fullscreen behaviour of chromium based applications when using windowed fullscreen, or a fix to make certain Java applications play more nicely with xmonad.

• XMonad.Hooks.WindowSwallowing

  A new module to implement window swallowing; optionally via sublayouting. Hide parent windows like terminals when opening other programs (like image viewers) from within them, restoring them once the child application closes.

• XMonad.Util.ClickableWorkspaces

  A new module providing clickablePP, which when applied to the PP pretty-printer used by XMonad.Hooks.StatusBar.PP, will make the workspace tags clickable in XMobar (for switching focus).

  Note that XMonad.Layout.IndependentScreens and XMonad.Actions.WorkspaceNames now also use the same composable ppRename interface as XMonad.Util.ClickableWorkspaces so it’s much easier to use them with one another.

• XMonad.Util.Loggers

  • Added logTitles to log all window titles (focused and unfocused ones) on the focused workspace, as well as logTitlesOnScreen as a screen-specific variant thereof.

• XMonad.Actions.TopicSpace

  • Added TopicItem, as well as the helper functions topicNames, tiActions, tiDirs, noAction, and inHome for a drastically simpler specification of topics.

• XMonad.Hooks.ServerMode

  • To make it easier to use, the xmonadctl client is now included in scripts/.

Logo Contest

We’d also like to announce a contest to create a new xmonad logo to replace the current one. If you want to participate, please submit at most three logos (in SVG format) to this GitHub discussion by the 31st of January. Please do not vote for a logo yet—voting will start after the above deadline. Your logo will need to be licensed under a suitable freely distributable license; for example, the CC BY-SA 4.0.

The prize for the winner is $100!

For voting, we will use an instant-runoff type system. In short:

• Users rank a minimum of three submissions according to their preferences in decreasing order.
• If a logo wins a majority of first-preference votes (> 50%) it is chosen.
• If not, we eliminate the logo with the least amount of first preference votes, exposing the second preference of those who voted for it.
• Rinse and repeat until we have a majority.
• If at the end of all that we still don’t have a majority, we will act as a tiebreaker and internally vote for a winner from the remaining logos.

We will retain veto power in case of inappropriate logos. Team members whose submitted entries are amongst the remaining choices will not partake in the potential tiebreaking vote.

Looking for Funding

TL;DR:

XMonad has been around since 2007 and has a great track record in stability. There’s an active, vibrant community of users and developers who help each other and contribute fixes and extensions. Keeping this community organized, reviewing and merging contributions and responding to bug reports is almost a full-time job, however, not to mention doing actual development. We’ve been struggling to find volunteers to do all this work, especially the less exciting bits like documentation.

Despite that struggle, we managed to repay a portion of our technological and organizational debt over the last year, and to pick up the pace of development:

We’re worried about the sustainability of that pace, however. As with the previous generations of maintainers, our studies and sabbaticals won’t last forever.

Your help is needed to keep the project alive and well. We’d like to raise enough funds to enable at least one core developer to work on XMonad full-time (or several part-time). To learn more about our plans for the future, see our GitHub Sponsors profile.

Thanks to one unexpected appearance on the Hacker News front page, we already gathered a couple dozen sponsors who donate in total over $300 a month. We’re incredibly grateful for this support! Our fiscal host is the Open Source Collective, so our budget is fully transparent on our Collective’s page.

If you also want to aid our efforts going forward, please consider becoming a supporter as well. We accept both monthly and one-time donations through GitHub Sponsors and Open Collective.

Thank you!