xmonad/CHANGES.md

Change Log / Release Notes

0.13 (Sometime Early 2017)

Breaking Changes

• When restarting xmonad, resume state is no longer passed to the next process via the command line. Instead, a temporary state file is created and xmonad's state is serialized to that file.

  When upgrading to 0.13 from a previous version, the --resume command line option will automatically migrate to a state file.

  This fixes issue #12.

Enhancements

• You can now control which directory xmonad uses for finding your configuration file and which one is used for storing the compiled version of your configuration. In order of preference:

  1. New environment variables. If you want to use these ensure you set the correct environment variable and also create the directory it references:

     • XMONAD_CONFIG_DIR
     • XMONAD_CACHE_DIR
     • XMONAD_DATA_DIR

  2. XDG Base Directory Specification directories, if they exist:

     • XDG_CONFIG_HOME/xmonad
     • XDG_CACHE_HOME/xmonad
     • XDG_DATA_HOME/xmonad

  3. The ~/.xmonad directory.

  If none of these directories exist then an appropriate directory will be created. If the relevant environment variable mentioned in step (1) above is set, the referent directory will be created and used. Otherwise the relevant XDG directory from (2) will be used.

  Note: If the environment variables mentioned in (1) above are not set, the directories in (2) don't exist, and ~/.xmonad does exist, the traditional behavior of using ~/.xmonad for everything will be used.

  This fixes a few issues, notably #7 and #56.

• A custom build script can be used when xmonad is given the --recompile command line option. If an executable named build exists in the xmonad configuration directory it will be called instead of ghc. It takes one argument, the name of the executable binary it must produce.

  Note: the build script is called whenever ghc would have been called. That means the xmonad.hs file (or any files in lib need to have newer time stamps than the generated executable in order for the build script to be called.

  This fixes #8. (One of two possible custom build solutions. See the next entry for another solution.)

• For users who build their xmonad configuration using tools such as cabal or stack, there is another option for executing xmonad.

  Instead of running the xmonad executable directly, arrange to have your login manager run your configuration binary instead. Then, in your binary, use the new launch command instead of xmonad.

  This will keep xmonad from using its configuration file checking/compiling code and directly start the window manager without execing any other binary.

  See the documentation for the launch function in XMonad.Main for more details.

  Fixes #8. (Second way to have a custom build environment for XMonad. See previous entry for another solution.)

0.12 (December 14, 2015)

• Compiles with GHC 7.10.2, 7.8.4, and 7.6.3

• Use of data-default allows using def where previously you had to write defaultConfig, defaultXPConfig, etc.

• The setlocale package is now used instead of a binding shipped with xmonad proper allowing the use of Main.hs instead of Main.hsc

• No longer encodes paths for spawnPID

• The default manageHook no longer floats Gimp windows

• Doesn't crash when there are fewer workspaces than screens

• Query is now an instance of Applicative

• Various improvements to the example configuration file