[xmonad] automatically generating template xmonad.hs if it doesn't exist

[Spencer Janssen]

On Thu, Jan 03, 2008 at 05:18:06PM -0500, Brent Yorgey wrote:
> Hi all,
> 
> I was just talking with cce in #xmonad, who suggested that it would be nice
> if xmonad, when starting up, checked for the presence of xmonad.hs in
> ~/.xmonad/ and installed the template xmonad.hs if it's not there.
> Especially for those installing xmonad via a packaged distribution, it may
> not be immediately obvious how to start configuring xmonad, where to put
> xmonad.hs, and so on.  I thought I'd run this idea by the list to see what
> people think before I implement it... perhaps there's a good reason it
> doesn't do this already.
> 
> -Brent

We ought to look at precedent from most other Unix tools -- they don't install
stub configuration files and I think there are good reasons behind that.
Consider a user that tries xmonad, but then decides in the end that it isn't
for them.  We shouldn't leave ~/.xmonad cruft (probably including a 3MB cached
binary!) behind.

Rather than install boilerplate configuration files in every user's home
directory, we should use our prominent documentation locations (the manpage
and xmonad.org) to point to an example config.


Cheers,
Spencer Janssen