xmonad : a tiling window manager http://xmonad.org xmonad is a tiling window manager for X. Windows are arranged automatically to tile the screen without gaps or overlap, maximising screen use. Window manager features are accessible from the keyboard: a mouse is optional. xmonad is written, configured and extensible in Haskell. Custom layout algorithms, key bindings and other extensions may be written by the user in config files. Layouts are applied dynamically, and different layouts may be used on each workspace. Xinerama is fully supported, allowing windows to be tiled on several physical screens. Building: Building is quite straightforward, and requries a basic Haskell toolchain. On many systems xmonad is available as a binary package in your package system (e.g. on debian or gentoo). If at all possible, use this in preference to a source build, as the dependency resolution will be simpler. We'll now walk through the complete list of toolchain dependencies. * GHC: the Glasgow Haskell Compiler You first need a Haskell compiler. Your distribution's package system will have binaries of GHC (the Glasgow Haskell Compiler), the compiler we use, so install that first. If your operating system's package system doesn't provide a binary version of GHC, you can find them here: http://haskell.org/ghc For example, in Debian you would install GHC with: apt-get install ghc6 It shouldn't be necessary to compile GHC from source -- every common system has a pre-build binary version. * X11 libraries: Since you're building an X application, you'll need the C X11 library headers. On many platforms, these come pre-installed. For others, such as Debian, you can get them from your package manager: apt-get install libx11-dev Typically you need: libXinerama libXext libX11 * Cabal xmonad requires a recent version of Cabal, >= 1.2.0. If you're using GHC 6.8, then it comes bundled with the right version. If you're using GHC 6.6.x, you'll need to build and install Cabal from hackage first: http://hackage.haskell.org/cgi-bin/hackage-scripts/package/Cabal You can check which version you have with the command: $ ghc-pkg list Cabal Cabal-1.2.2.0 * Haskell libraries: mtl, unix, X11 Finally, you need the Haskell libraries xmonad depends on. Since you've a working GHC installation now, most of these will be provided. To check whether you've got a package run 'ghc-pkg list some_package_name'. You will need the following packages: mtl http://hackage.haskell.org/cgi-bin/hackage-scripts/package/mtl-1.0 unix http://hackage.haskell.org/cgi-bin/hackage-scripts/package/unix-2.0 X11 http://hackage.haskell.org/cgi-bin/hackage-scripts/package/X11-1.4.1 * Build xmonad: Once you've got all the dependencies in place (which should be straightforward), build xmonad: runhaskell Setup.lhs configure --user --prefix=$HOME runhaskell Setup.lhs build runhaskell Setup.lhs install --user And you're done! ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Notes for using the darcs version If you're building the darcs version of xmonad, be sure to also use the darcs version of the X11 library, which is developed concurrently with xmonad. darcs get http://darcs.haskell.org/X11 Not using X11 from darcs is the most common reason for the darcs version of xmonad to fail to build. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Running xmonad: Add: $HOME/bin/xmonad to the last line of your .xsession or .xinitrc file. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Configuring: See the CONFIG document ------------------------------------------------------------------------ XMonadContrib There are many extensions to xmonad available in the XMonadContrib (xmc) library. Examples include an ion3-like tabbed layout, a prompt/program launcher, and various other useful modules. XMonadContrib is available at: 0.6 release: http://hackage.haskell.org/cgi-bin/hackage-scripts/package/xmonad-contrib-0.6 darcs version: darcs get http://code.haskell.org/XMonadContrib ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Other useful programs: A nicer xterm replacment, that supports resizing better: urxvt http://software.schmorp.de/pkg/rxvt-unicode.html For custom status bars: dzen http://gotmor.googlepages.com/dzen xmobar http://hackage.haskell.org/cgi-bin/hackage-scripts/package/xmobar For a program dispatch menu: dmenu http://www.suckless.org/download/ gmrun (in your package system) Authors: Spencer Janssen Don Stewart Jason Creighton