[xmonad] auto start apps on login, but not reloads

[Brandon Allbery]

On Fri, Mar 24, 2017 at 6:19 AM, Sam Halliday <sam.halliday at gmail.com>
wrote:

> Following http://stackoverflow.com/questions/10976044/ I have added the
> following to my `startupHook`
>
>     startup :: X ()
>     startup = do
>               setWMName "LG3D"
>               spawnOn "workspace1" "urxvt"
>               spawnOn "workspace2" "emacs"
>               spawnOn "workspace3" "chromium"
>
> but there are three problems:
>
> 1. I am duplicating the definition of my terminal. It seems like I
>    should be using
>    [`shellPromptOn`](http://xmonad.org/xmonad-docs/xmonad-
> contrib/XMonad-Actions-SpawnOn.html)
>    but it takes an extra parameter and I don't know where to get it
>    from.
>

No, that's an interactive prompt at a screen edge that asks for a command,
with built-in completion, and passes it to a shell. There is no terminal
involved, unless that is what you tell it to launch. (The `XPConfig` is the
configuration for an XMonad.Prompt screen edge popup window.)

2. this is putting everything on my current workspace. How can I find
>    out what my workspaces are called? I don't believe I've customised
>    the names, you can see [my .xmonad/xmonad.hs on github to
>    confirm](https://github.com/fommil/dotfiles/blob/master/.
> xmonad/xmonad.hs)
>

You indeed haven't, so your workspaces are "1", "2", ... "9".

You're also missing manageSpawn in the manageHook, so nothing ever gets
moved anyway.

3. This will start the apps again on a `xmonad --restart`. How can we
>    guard against that? It is very useful to be able to restart xmonad
>    without quitting and I don't want to lose that ability.
>

There isn't anything that combines the functionality of spawnOnce and
spawnOn currently. I replace the spawnOnce with a bit of a hack that checks
whether xmonad was launched with parameters (which it normally isn't, but a
restart passes the old state). Using your config as a template:

    import Control.Monad
    import System.Environment

    main = do
      args <- getArgs
      xmonad $ ewmh $ withUrgencyHook dzenUrgencyHook { args = ["-bg",
"darkgreen", "-xs", "1"] }
             $ defaultConfig {
               terminal = "urxvt"
             , startupHook = startup (null args)
             *-- and the rest here...*
        }

    startup :: Bool -> X ()
    startup initial = do
                      setWMName "LG3D"
                      when initial $ do
                        spawnOn "1" "urxvt"
                        spawnOn "2" "emacs"
                        spawnOn "3" "chromium"

Note also that chromium can misbehave with spawnOn because we have to rely
on the window registering the same associated process ID as the one we get
back from running it, and it often isn't. See
https://wiki.haskell.org/Xmonad/General_xmonad.hs_config_tips#Terminal_emulator_factories
for more information. (chromium is a bit worse in that many versions of its
wrapper script fork, so the pid will *never* match.)

-- 
brandon s allbery kf8nh                               sine nomine associates
allbery.b at gmail.com                                  ballbery at sinenomine.net
unix, openafs, kerberos, infrastructure, xmonad        http://sinenomine.net
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://mail.haskell.org/pipermail/xmonad/attachments/20170324/f76cb203/attachment.html>