configuring custom DWM with LightDM

[SilkeSiy]

Hello everyone,

I'm new to gentoo and to linux in general so i'm not sure if im missing something silly.

let me state my goal first: i want to build dwm locally and then make lightdwm use it in a nice way (not a hacky way that might cause problem down the road).

here is what i have done:

I have gentoo with systemd, lightdm, and dwm all installed with the traditional way following the handbook and gentoo manuals.

But with DWM i have to patch things manually since not all patches are comparability with each other.

So i created a local folder called src in ~/.local/src so my setup will be that the stuff that i build in ~/.local/src will be exported to ~/.local/bin and the same for the man pages etc.

with this setup i dont have to miss around with the system files in /usr/local stuff.
~/.local/bin is added to the path using ~/.profile and i have added "source ~/.profile" in my ~/.bashrc just incase, and my /bin/sh points to bash and when i do make install for DWM i can see that it uses ~/.local/bin/dwm with the which command.

now when i go to /etc/lightdm/lightdm.conf and i change my user-session to dwm it complains that it cannot find dwm.
but when i install dwm via emerge everything works.

i tried to invisitage the issue and found out that there is dwm.desktop file in /usr/share/xessions/dwm.desktop so i replicated that in my ~/.local/share/applications/dwm.desktop and edited the dwm.desktop in my local file to point to the absolute path to ~/.local/bin/dwm and deselected dwm and depcleaned it and updated the desktop stuff with update-desktop-database

but still lightdm says it cannot find dwm when i run lightdm with --test-mode --debug.

So i came back and installed dwm with emerge to reverse engineer the thing to see where it actualyl start etc, and i found a folder in /etc/X11/Sessions with some scripts that start alternative desktop environment and it contained awesome (AwesomeWM), dwm, Xsession. and dwm file has the line exec /usr/bin/dwm.

now i know that if i replaced that line with my path dwm path in ~/.local everything might work.
but there are many stuff and idk why there are two entry points with /usr/share/xessions/dwm.desktop and /etc/X11/etc/Session/dwm


now my methodology that i prerfer is installing my dwm in ~/.local and then make lightdm uses that.
but im not sure what is the proper way of doing this. i tried using Xsession and put stuff in my .xprofile to start dwm but it didnt work and it closes immeditly.
and im not using OpenRC so .xinitrc is not an option (or at least that is what i think since the file name ends with rc).

so my question is, what is the proper way of installing custom window manager in gentoo that respect the system file hierarchy so if i wanted to change lightdm with something else the login manager can detect my dwm.

Sorry if my post is long im just confused and tired of researching this issue.

[Hu]

[SilkeSiy]

Hello Hu,

Thank you for your detailed response!

I forgot to mention why im i jumping through this route in the first place so forgive me for that.

with DWM, not all of its patches are compatible since there might be some collusion where a patch cannot be applied. I'm now using /etc/portage/patches but i had to edit the patch to adapt to the previous patch in sequence which is just slower than patching the source code manually.

and thank you for explaining the .xinitrc file and its relation to startx ! i should read more about it.

my logic behind the ~/.local setup is that i can backup my dot files easily which contains my custom builds as well.

im not sure about the gentoo way since im just like 1 week old in the distro, but is it just better to patch DWM manually then create a patch with the difference between my current code and the installed version from emerge and put that in the /etc/portage/patches ?
if that is the case then creating custom patches would be easier.

what do you think?

[Hu]

[SilkeSiy]

Yeah i just thought if im going to use gentoo then dwm might bring the maximum gentoo experience (learning stuff through out the processes) but yeah i agree with you dwm makes it a hassle to add new stuff.
I will try to make a custom patch and add it in the /etc/portage/patches then i will look for more configurable window manager and try them out one by one.

Thank you for explaining gentoo more to me and discuss this issue with me.

[Hu]

Happy to help. Please come back if you have more questions, about dwm or any of the other packages you try.

[figueroa]

Consider OpenBox. http://openbox.org/wiki/Main_Page
It's a delight to use with a plethora of choices for additions to create a beautiful, easy to maintain, and productive user desktop. Although the "Main_Page" is a bit sparse, an Internet search will reveal a nearly bottomless well of suggestions.

I use it personally with PCManFM to manage the desktop and LXPanel which provides a traditional panel with a menu, tools, ans system area. There is a forum post that explains my setup which might be an easy place to start: https://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-1119739-highlight-lxde+openbox.html

Also, there are many OpenBox users right here in the forums.
_________________
Andy Figueroa
hp pavilion hpe h8-1260t/2AB5; spinning rust x3
i7-2600 @ 3.40GHz; 16 gb; Radeon HD 7570
amd64/23.0/split-usr/desktop (stable), OpenRC, -systemd -pulseaudio -uefi

[pjp]

[Hu]

I think having a configuration file to let the user manage their keybindings without a recompile would not significantly reduce its security. Between that and the inability even to enable well-known patches without use of source code patching, and that some of the well-known patches are mutually incompatible, this feels to me more like the author(s) identified some functionality they didn't want to write, then retrofitted an explanation ("application security") to justify the missing features. For most projects, well-known patches like this would have been merged and gated behind a configuration flag, so that users can turn the feature on/off with just a preprocessor directive. That would also make it easier to review the true impact of a change, since all the affected code would be in the same checkout, rather than needing to worry about which patches a given change will break.

[GDH-gentoo]

[pjp]