A DBus extension for rofi
Project description
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
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.
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