[xmonad] Re: xmonad 0.8 release candidate

[Braden Shepherdson]

Spencer Janssen wrote:
> core:
>     gaps removed
>     floats always use current screen
>     setlocale/make title locale aware
>     performance hack, reduced window redraws
>     made (|||) associative
> 
> contrib:
>     Perworkspace: selectively apply layout modifiers to workspaces
>     ManageDocks: ability to toggle gaps on each side of the screen separately
>     HintedGride layout
>     XMonad.Layout.Gaps: a layout modifier for manual gaps
>     locale awareness for window titles, UTF-8 support
>     ManageHelpers: some support for _NET_WM_STATE_FULLSCREEN
>     XMonad.Config.{Desktop, Gnome, Kde, Xfce}
>     XMonad.Hooks.DynamicLog: xmobar function for starting xmobar
>     WindowNavigation improvements
>     PlainConfig?
>     remove ScratchWorkspace (no longer maintained)
>     XMonad.Hooks.FadeInactive: works with xcompmgr to fade inactive windows
>     new Scratchpad

The PlainConfig in contrib works, and the documentation describes the 
file format and how to write an xmonad.hs to use it. It still lacks the 
xmonad.conf->xmonad.hs compiler, which I'm "working on" now, though the 
cottage and nice weather is rather distracting me. In any case 
PlainConfig is unlikely to be used by someone with GHC installed, so it 
isn't very relevant to the main release tarballs.

I have a nightly build script written for creating ordinary xmonad 
tarballs and also ones with the precompiled config using PlainConfig. 
They are still in progress, but soon they will be ready. The goal here 
is to produce nightly builds of xmonad from darcs that use PlainConfig, 
and therefore do not require GHC. I will check out the 0.8 release tag 
and build a PlainConfig binary for that to go alongside the normal 
release, though it will likely be some time after the 0.8 release.

The nightly builds in general will help anyone migrate to the darcs 
version from the release version, without needing to get darcs and 
figure out how to compile the source themselves.

I'm home at the family cottage for the next week, then moving to New 
York for my internship with Fog Creek Software[1]. I'm not going to be 
around much for the next two weeks, but we'll see how much hacking I can 
get done in the evenings.


Braden Shepherdson
shspheb