py-rofi-bus 0.2.0

A DBus extension for rofi

This package provides a DBus foundation for rofi.

Current version is a skeleton API with a simple window switcher. The API will potentially change drastically.

Features

(These are all planned; 0.2.0 doesn’t expose much of an API)

• Spawn and populate scripts/modi via py-rofi-bus

• Save information from scripts/modi

• Split massive scripts/modi into smaller components that pass state through py-rofi-hub

Setup

System Dependencies

• The rofi utility

• XCB Python bindings (preferably via xcffib)

Installation

$ pip install --user py-rofi-bus

Usage

As of 0.2.0, logging and help menus are pretty sparse. Expect things to break without a clear reason.

MainDbusDaemon

The (current) core of py-rofi-bus is MainDbusDaemon, which combines all of the important features in some manner without implementing any of them very well. MainDbusDaemon forks to become a daemon and runs in the background. It publishes a very simple interface to the SessionBus and waits for interaction from the user. It currently cannot resuscitate itself should its main loop be killed or exited.

CLI Interaction

py-rofi-bus exposes a very simple CLI to manage MainDbusDaemon.

$ which py-rofi-bus
~/.local/bin/py-rofi-bus
$ py-rofi-bus daemon -h
usage: py-rofi-bus daemon [-h] {start,status,stop} ...

positional arguments:
  {start,status,stop}  Available actions
    start              Start the daemon
    status             Check the status of the daemon
    stop               Stop the daemon

optional arguments:
  -h, --help           show this help message and exit

The CLI is independent of the daemon so it can be used to restart the daemon.

DBus Interface

start

Starts the daemon. Doesn’t actually do anything (except I don’t think I’m properly watching the PID file so it actually just restarts the daemon).

stop

Stops the daemon. This kills the daemon’s process.

is_running

True if the daemon is running; GDBus.Error:org.freedesktop.DBus.Error.ServiceUnknown if the daemon is not running.

load_apps

This is an experimental feature that attempts to run any executable found in the configured load_from directory. Files must be marked as executable for the script to be able to load them. So far my cursory tests have demonstrated an ability to load and control both simple scripts and more complicated things like daemons. They’ve also revealed that I should have planned a bit better and will probably face some refactoring soon.

systemd Integration

MainDbusDaemon can easily be run as a user systemd unit. First a target that binds to the graphical-session.target must be made.

$ cat $XDG_CONF_HOME/systemd/user/my-first.target
[Unit]
Description=Lives and dies with the graphical session
BindsTo=graphical-session.target

We can now bind a unit to the target, meaning it will also be dependent on the graphical-session. Note that the paths below assume a --user install. You’ll need to update them if py-rofi-bus was installed somewhere else.

$ cat $XDG_CONF_HOME/systemd/user/pyrofibus.service
[Unit]
Description=py-rofi-bus
PartOf=graphical-session.target

[Service]
Type=forking
ExecStart=%h/.local/bin/py-rofi-bus daemon start
ExecStop=%h/.local/bin/py-rofi-bus daemon stop
PIDFile=%h/.config/wotw/py-rofi-bus/.pid

[Install]
WantedBy=my-first.target

# Start the service to make sure it works
$ systemctl --user start pyrofibus.service

# Assuming it does, you can enable it to run automatically
$ systemctl --user enable pyrofibus.service

Finally, to trigger my-first.target, add these commands somewhere in your startup files. I run i3 and these are executed at the end of my i3 config file. The tail end of your .whateverrc file would work well too.

# Some of these might not be necessary. I never weeded out the duds.
# You'll need some of these variables to be able to trigger the target.
systemctl --user import-environment USER HOME PATH DISPLAY XAUTHORITY
systemctl --user start my-first.target

Example App

I updated the proof-of-concept example. It cast some light on the package’s deficiencies. Use it with a grain of salt. Many things that are manual now aren’t planned to be manual forever.

Initial Setup

Assuming you’ve installed py-rofi-bus, you’ll need to create the configuration directory.

$ mkdir -p "$XDG_CONFIG_HOME/wotw/py-rofi-bus/{apps-enabled,pids}"

To run the daemons, they must be in the load_from config directory, which is probably the one above unless you changed things.

$ cd path/to/repo/or/package
$ ls -l examples/rofi-alt-tab
total 16
-rw-r--r--. 1 cjharries cjharries 2457 Jun  3 13:06 active_window_monitor_daemon.py
-rw-r--r--. 1 cjharries cjharries 2231 Jun  3 13:06 dbus_window_daemon.py
-rw-r--r--. 1 cjharries cjharries 4826 Jun  3 13:06 ordered_window_script.py
$ chmod u+x examples/rofi-alt-tab/*.py
$ source <(
    realpath examples/rofi-alt-tab/*daemon.py | \
        awk '{ print "ln -s "$0" $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/wotw/py-rofi-bus/apps-enabled"; }' \
    )
$ ls -l ~/.config/wotw/py-rofi-bus/apps-enabled
total 12
lrwxrwxrwx. 1 cjharries cjharries 103 Jun  3 18:00 active_window_monitor_daemon.py -> <snip>/examples/rofi-alt-tab/active_window_monitor_daemon.py
lrwxrwxrwx. 1 cjharries cjharries  93 Jun  3 18:00 dbus_window_daemon.py -> <snip>/examples/rofi-alt-tab/dbus_window_daemon.py

If you’re not comfortable symlinking the files or don’t feel like going to the trouble, you can always do a vanilla copy.

You’ll also need to expose the script in some way. A generally recommended idea is to store scripts in a common location.

$ mkdir -p $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/rofi/scripts
$ cd path/to/repo/or/package
$ ln -s $(realpath examples/rofi-alt-tab/ordered_window_script.py) $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/rofi/scripts

Launching the Main Daemon

Run the following command.

$ py-rofi-bus daemon start

Launching the Example

Once the files are in the load_from directory and the daemon is running, you’ll have to either add another file or pop open a REPL.

$ python

>>> import pydbus
>>> bus = pydbus.SessionBus()
>>> loader = bus.get('pro.wizardsoftheweb.pyrofibus.daemon.window_properties')
>>> loader.load_apps()
>>> exit()

Running the Modi

With the script accessible and the daemons running, you can either execute it as a one-off or add it to your configuration.

# Runs it as a one-off
$ rofi -modi alttab:~/.config/rofi/scripts/ordered_window_script.py -show alttab

# Adds it to the existing config
$ export ROFI_CONFIG_FILE=$(rofi --help | awk 'BEGIN{ IGNORECASE = 1 };/configuration file/{ print $3; }')
$ [ -f $ROFI_CONFIG_FILE ] || rofi -dump-config > $ROFI_CONFIG_FILE
$ sed        \
    -i=.bak  \
    -e 's@\([^-]modi:.*\)";@\1,alttab:~/.config/rofi/scripts/ordered_window_script.py";@g' \
    $ROFI_CONFIG_FILE
$ rofi -show alttab

Conclusion

Like its predecessor, this example (and the package it’s from) is still very much in its infancy. Expect things to change. This is too much work to do when Python could it for me.