[xmonad] xmonad-light

[Braden Shepherdson]

Gretings, everyone.

Many people have probably seen my blog post[1] announcing xmonad-light. 
It discusses the reasoning behind splitting XMonad.Config.PlainConfig 
into a separate project, and its features both present and future.

Don expressed some concern that too few eyes have seen the code, so I 
submit the darcs repo[2] for your consideration. Comments, criticism and 
patches are welcome (darcs send to this address). As I say in the blog 
post, one part I'm not happy about is the large amount of seeming 
duplication, all the cmd_* functions to build the XConfig, and the 
corresponding hcmd_* functions that output equivalent Haskell code.


The other discussion is how to release xmonad-light. Depending on when 
0.8 is to actually be released, should xmonad-light be released at the 
same time? Could it just be announced as coming soon, and not hold up 
the main release? I suspect that work on it (remembering that I'm 
packing this weekend, moving on Monday and starting a new job on 
Tuesday) can be completed within a week, to bring it to the point 
(modulo bugs) where it can be released to binary packages. The more eyes 
on the code between now and then, the better.

As Joachim pointed out, most distro binary package maintainers would 
rather include the far more powerful xmonad-light binary than the 
unconfigurable xmonad base binary. Since xmonad-light cascades from 
xmonad.hs to xmonad.conf to default configuration, its behaviour sans 
config file(s) is precisely the same as the xmonad binary.


So please, comments on the code, and discussion of when and how to 
release xmonad-light are welcome.

To submit my own views on it, I don't want to rush xmonad-light. This is 
especially true in light of how busy I'm likely to be the next week. I 
think it best, therefore, to announce xmonad-light as a major feature 
alongside xmonad 0.8, noting that it will be released in September.

I would be careful to make clear when announcing xmonad-light that it is 
not replacing Haskell configuration, but providing a new alternative 
aimed at new users.


Braden Shepherdson
shepheb

[1] http://braincrater.wordpress.com/2008/08/28/announcing-xmonad-light/
[2] darcs get http://code.haskell.org/~shepheb/xmonad-light