[xmonad] Add 'browser' to XConfig

[Spencer Janssen]

On Mon, Mar 31, 2008 at 11:28:21AM -0700, David Roundy wrote:
> On Mon, Mar 31, 2008 at 09:24:42PM +0300, Roman Cheplyaka wrote:
> > * David Roundy <droundy at darcs.net> [2008-03-31 11:12:51-0700]
> > > On Mon, Mar 31, 2008 at 07:51:31PM +0300, Roman Cheplyaka wrote:
> > > > * David Roundy <droundy at darcs.net> [2008-03-31 09:05:33-0700]
> > > > > On Mon, Mar 31, 2008 at 06:21:35PM +0300, Roman Cheplyaka wrote:
> > > > > > * David Roundy <droundy at darcs.net> [2008-03-31 07:58:52-0700]
> > > > > > > If you prefer, we could alternately support XMONAD_BROWSER.  Note that
> > > > > > > putting the browser in the environment would also make it immediately
> > > > > > > runtime-configurable (well, with a few lines of code in contrib).
> > > > > > 
> > > > > > How do you see it?
> > > > > 
> > > > > I'm not sure what you're asking.  You'd just start a terminal and then run
> > > > > echo $BROWSER to see what the value is.
> > > > 
> > > > Sorry, I was in hurry.
> > > > I mean, how do you see runtime configuration of some environment
> > > > variable, like BROWSER? If xmonad is up and running, I see no way to
> > > > change its environment from outside. Even restarting it (mod-q) doesn't
> > > > seem to allow this.
> > > 
> > > We'd just define a little prompt module, and then do something like
> > > 
> > > setEnv "BROWSER" "new value" True
> > > 
> > > This would also solve my problem with connecting a new ssh-agent to xmonad
> > > (and thus to new terminals started by xmonad).
> > 
> > Ah, that will work. But if we introduce global configuration variable,
> > it's weird to configure it specially for xmonad.
> 
> I never said you had to introduce a global configuration variable for
> xmonad, I said you could do so if you wanted.
> 
> > I'd propose you to make symlink somewhere in your $PATH (like
> > $HOME/bin/x-www-browser) which would point to your preferred browser.
> > And this solution would allow truly runtime configuration.
> 
> Now that truly is a global solution, that can't be runtime configured in
> any sort of flexible way (e.g. if you wanted to use two different browsers
> on different machines that share a home directory).  Much nicer to use
> environment variables, which are per-process, rather than global
> variables like symlinks.
> -- 
> David Roundy
> Department of Physics
> Oregon State University

$HOME/bin/x-www-browser could easily be a script that consults an environment
variable and executes that.