Herbstluftwm Help

[tororutsu]

Hello, I currently have a working herbstluftwm environment. It is installed using configuration.nix. I didn't really notice problems until I tried getting dmenu working. Pkgs I installed thru home-manager wouldn't show up on dmenu. So I tried looking more into it, and I think it has to do with my WM not being configured with home-manager. If I can get some help setting that up, I would definitely appreciate it

[berbiche]

Hi @rjahrj,

First, can you confirm what Linux distribution you use?

Can you also confirm that $HOME/.nix-profile/bin is in your $PATH? If not, can you share the content of this variable.

[tororutsu]

@berbiche hello thanks for reaching out. I am using NixOS 20.11 and yes I can confirm that .nix-profile/bin is in my path

[berbiche]

I think your herbstluftwm is not loading the environment (it does not execute $HOME/.profile, or some other shell file before starting) so it does not have the correct $PATH.

[tororutsu]

This is the error I get when I now try to use home-manager switch

error : list index 0 is out of bounds, at /home/Rj/.nix-defexpr/channels/home-manager/modules/services/window-managers/herbstluftwm.nix

[berbiche]

Sorry for the late reply.

You have to set at least one tag in the configuration with xsession.windowManager.herbstluftwm.tags = [ "something" ];.

I think the issue is due to this line in Home Manager: https://github.com/nix-community/home-manager/blob/8ab155c61f5821ffda723de88b0009769771d4f2/modules/services/window-managers/herbstluftwm.nix#L148-L152

cc: @olmokramer

[tororutsu]

@berbiche thanks that definitely allowed me to enable Herbst on HM, now the problem is the autostart file. Or the Nix equivalent? This just gives me the red border and nothing works 🤦🏽

[berbiche]

Sorry, I'm not sure. I have no experience with Herbstluftwm.

You can change your configuration iteratively and look at the generated configuration file to fix anything until you have a 1-to-1 mapping of your shell script with the nix expression.

[olmokramer]

Sorry for the late reply, was on vacation for a couple of days. Could you share the autostart script you're trying to recreate @rjahrj ? What do you mean with "nothing works"?

[tororutsu]

@olmokramer perfectly fine, actually I am using the default config from the Herbstluftwm git repo. But I was at one point trying to load it using the xdg.configFile option while keeping it in my dotfiles. However both files become read-only 🤦🏽. So what is the default way the define and manage the autostart file using Home-manager? Please and thank you. At this point I just want to know lol 🤦🏽

[olmokramer]

If you don't want to manage your Herbstluftwm config with Home Manager I would recommend setting

xsession.windowManager.herbstluftwm.enable = false

and make sure that Herbstluft is only started after Home Manger has done its setup of the PATH environment variable, for example by setting

xsession.windowManager.command = "${pkgs.herbstluftwm}/bin/herbstluftwm --locked";

Otherwise, if you do want to manage your Herbstluftwm config with Home Manager, you will need to set the settings and keybindings in your Home Manager configuration.

[tororutsu]

Yes I want to use HM, so pretty much I need to convert the autostart file into the separate HM Herbstluftwm functions?

On Wed, Apr 20, 2022, 07:48 Olmo Kramer @.***> wrote:

If you don't want to manage your Herbstluftwm config with Home Manager I would recommend setting

xsession.windowManager.herbstluftwm.enable = false

and make sure that Herbstluft is only started after Home Manger has done its setup of the PATH environment variable, for example by setting

xsession.windowManager.command = "${pkgs.herbstluftwm}/bin/herbstluftwm --locked";

Otherwise, if you do want to manage your Herbstluftwm config with Home Manager, you will need to set the settings and keybindings in your Home Manager configuration.

— Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub https://github.com/nix-community/home-manager/issues/2884#issuecomment-1103840468, or unsubscribe https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/AE2BBDV3RIGAVONNP57VENTVF7VJVANCNFSM5TBOTN2A . You are receiving this because you were mentioned.Message ID: @.***>

[tororutsu]

@olmokramer thanks that definitely helps a lot Where would I put stuff like hc detect_monitors I tried putting it in herbstluftwm.extraConfig but that didn't work 😞

[tororutsu]

@olmokramer sorry for spamming you with questions 😭 but what about tag switching?

[berbiche]

@rjahrj You can use the keybinds option and the tags option.

I recommend looking at the documentation for the options here: https://nix-community.github.io/home-manager/options.html#opt-xsession.windowManager.herbstluftwm.enable

The shell code can be translated to:

let
  # A list is used because it preserves ordering
  tags = [
    { name = "tag 1"; key = "something"; }
    { name = "tag 2"; }
    ...
  ];
  # Attribute set of { <keybind> = "use <tag>"; }
  keybinds = let
    tagsWithKeybinds = lib.filter (lib.hasAttr "key") tags;
  in lib.listToAttrs (map (x: lib.nameValuePair x.key "use ${x.name}") tagsWithKeybinds);
in
{
  xsession.windowManager.herbstluftwm.keybinds = keybinds;
  xsession.windowManager.herbstluftwm.tags = lib.catAttrs "name" tags;
}

I also recommend reading the nixpkgs manual and getting acquainted with the library functions: https://nixos.org/manual/nixpkgs/unstable/#chap-functions

[olmokramer]

@rjahrj Sorry for the late reply, work was insanely busy the past couple of days. Yes you should put that in the herbstluftwm.extraConfig section, but you should use herbstclient instead of hc. If you want to use hc you can put alias hc=herbstclient at the top of herbstluftwm.extraConfig. For the tag switching keybinds you'd use something like @berbiche wrote.

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