Quick and dirty dwm + st installation

11 Jul 2021

dwm, the dynamic tiling window manager and st, the terminal emulator are solid programs coming from the suckless project.

Like all suckless projects, these require changes in source code (as patches) for configuration.

Dependencies

Install gcc, make and x11 development libraries to get our build environment ready. For voidlinux, I run the following.

$ sudo xbps-install -S base-devel libX11-devel libXft-devel libXinerama-devel

dwm

Clone the repo with

$ git clone https://git.suckless.org/dwm --depth=1

Run a test build
```
$ cd dwm
$ make
```
If everything went well, there should be a config.h file generated for us. Delete it for the time being. We are going to add some patches.
By default if we change to Monocle/or any other mode in one tag/workspace, all other tags use that mode too. I want the modes to be restricted to just that one tag. The pertag patch does this. I also need a system tray.
If you downloaded dwm as an archive, instead of git, get the patch with the dwm version dwm-pertag-6.2.diff and not the one with a date + commit hash dwm-pertag-20200914-61bb8b2.diff.

Since we got our dwm from git we'll use the latter.

$ mkdir patches
$ cd patches
$ wget https://dwm.suckless.org/patches/pertag/dwm-pertag-20200914-61bb8b2.diff
$ wget https://dwm.suckless.org/patches/systray/dwm-systray-20210418-67d76bd.diff

To patch, we'll use the patch command. You can also use git apply patch.diff. While in the root of the dwm source directory run,
```
$ patch -p1 < patches/dwm-pertag-20200914-61bb8b2.diff
$ patch -p1 < patches/dwm-systray-20210217-61bb8b2.diff
```
The systray patch will make the statusline show ... when its a bit long. To change that, open dwm.c and go to the void drawbar(Monitor *m) function. Change the line that says
```
tw = TEXTW(stext) - lrpad + 2; /* 2px padding */
```
to this
```
tw = TEXTW(stext) - lrpad / 2 + 2;
```
To compile and install, run
```
$ make
$ sudo make install
```

Starting dwm

Add the following to $HOME/.xinitrc

dwm_status_bar &
exec dwm

Here's the contents for dwm_status_bar. It updates the status bar every 10 seconds.

#!/bin/sh                                                                       

bat() {
  status="*"
  percent="$(awk '{ sum += $1 } END { print sum }' /sys/class/power_supply/BAT*/capacity)"
  online="$(acpi -V | grep 'on-line')"

  if test -z "$online"
  then
    status=""
  fi

  printf '%s%s%%\n' "$status" "$percent"
}

get_line() {                                                                    
  BAT=$(bat)                                                                    
  CLOCK=$(date "+%H:%M")                                                        
                                                                                
  echo "$BAT $CLOCK"                                                            
}                                                                               
                                                                                
while true                                                                      
do                                                                              
  xsetroot -name "$(get_line)"                                                  
  sleep 10s                                                                     
done

Here's my complete config.h file for dwm. The config has updates keybind and the applied patches - i3wm like keys, volume keys and 2 or 3 script invocations.

If you're interested in the scripts, get them from here.

For people using a login manager like gdm or lightdm, make a file called /usr/share/xsessions/dwm.desktop with the following content.

[Desktop Entry]
Encoding=UTF-8
Name=Dwm
Comment=the dynamic window manager
Exec=dwm
Icon=dwm
Type=XSession

st

Clone the repo with

$ git clone https://git.suckless.org/st --depth=1

There are 4 patches, that I usually apply.
- boxdraw - better utf-8 lines/separators.
- font2 - fallback fonts.
- scrollback - Shift + PgUp/PgDwn to scroll.
- clipboard - clipboard integration.

Getting the patches

$ cd st
$ mkdir patches
$ cd patches
$ wget https://st.suckless.org/patches/boxdraw/st-boxdraw_v2-0.8.3.diff
$ wget https://st.suckless.org/patches/clipboard/st-clipboard-0.8.3.diff
$ wget https://st.suckless.org/patches/font2/st-font2-20190326-f64c2f8.diff
$ wget https://st.suckless.org/patches/scrollback/st-scrollback-0.8.4.diff

While in the root of the st source directory run,

$ patch -p1 < patches/st-boxdraw_v2-0.8.3.diff
$ patch -p1 < patches/st-clipboard-0.8.3.diff
$ patch -p1 < patches/st-scrollback-0.8.4.diff
$ patch -p1 < patches/st-font2-20190326-f64c2f8.diff

To install
```
$ make
$ sudo make install
```

Here's my complete config.h file for st.

Fix st crashing for color emojis

It is a known issue that st crashes when rendering color emojis. The suckless team even has this in their FAQ. The solution for archlinux users is to install a package called libxft-bgra and rebuild st.

libxft-bgra being a patched package, was unfortunately not available on voidlinux. Here's a solution that the community suggests that we do.

In $HOME/.config/fontconfig/fonts.conf, set a fallback font that does not produce color emojis for Monospace

...
  <alias>
      <family>monospace</family>
      <prefer>
        <family>Hack</family>
        <family>Symbola</family>
      </prefer>
  </alias>
...

Look up symbola for your distro. If its not in your package manager's respositories, get it from here or here and put the *.ttf file in $HOME/.fonts or $HOME/.local/share/fonts.

Here's my complete fontconfig file, for reference.

Quick and dirty dwm + st installation

Dependencies

dwm

Starting dwm

st

Fix st crashing for color emojis

Links