Change Log / Release Notes

0.16

Breaking Changes

• XMonad.Layout.Decoration

  • Added Theme record fields for controlling decoration border width for active/inactive/urgent windows.

• XMonad.Prompt

  • Prompt ships a vim-like keymap, see vimLikeXPKeymap and vimLikeXPKeymap'. A reworked event loop supports new vim-like prompt actions.
  • Prompt supports dynamic colors. Colors are now specified by the XPColor type in XPState while XPConfig colors remain unchanged for backwards compatibility.
  • Fixes showCompletionOnTab.
  • The behavior of moveWord and moveWord' has changed; brought in line with the documentation and now internally consistent. The old keymaps retain the original behavior; see the documentation to do the same your XMonad configuration.

• XMonad.Util.Invisble

  • Requires MonadFail for Read instance

New Modules

• XMonad.Layout.TwoPanePersistent

  A layout that is like TwoPane but keeps track of the slave window that is currently beside the master. In TwoPane, the default behavior when the master is focused is to display the next window in the stack on the slave pane. This is a problem when a different slave window is selected without changing the stack order.

• XMonad.Util.ExclusiveScratchpads

  Named scratchpads that can be mutually exclusive: This new module extends the idea of named scratchpads such that you can define “families of scratchpads” that are exclusive on the same screen. It also allows to remove this constraint of being mutually exclusive with another scratchpad.

Bug Fixes and Minor Changes

• XMonad.Layout.Tabbed

  tabbedLeft and tabbedRight will set their tabs’ height and width according to decoHeight/decoWidth

• XMonad.Prompt

  Added sorter to XPConfig used to sort the possible completions by how well they match the search string (example: XMonad.Prompt.FuzzyMatch).

  Fixes a potential bug where an error during prompt execution would leave the window open and keep the keyboard grabbed. See issue #180.

  Fixes issue #217, where using tab to wrap around the completion rows would fail when maxComplRows is restricting the number of rows of output.

• XMonad.Prompt.Pass

  Added ‘passOTPPrompt’ to support getting OTP type password. This require pass-otp (https://github.com/tadfisher/pass-otp) has been setup in the running machine.

  Added ‘passGenerateAndCopyPrompt’, which both generates a new password and copies it to the clipboard. These two actions are commonly desirable to take together, e.g. when establishing a new account.

  Made password prompts traverse symlinks when gathering password names for autocomplete.

• XMonad.Actions.DynamicProjects

  Make the input directory read from the prompt in DynamicProjects absolute wrt the current directory.

  Before this, the directory set by the prompt was treated like a relative directory. This means that when you switch from a project with directory foo into a project with directory bar, xmonad actually tries to cd into foo/bar, instead of ~/bar as expected.

• XMonad.Actions.DynamicWorkspaceOrder

  Add a version of withNthWorkspace that takes a [WorkspaceId] -> [WorkspaceId] transformation to apply over the list of workspace tags resulting from the dynamic order.

• XMonad.Actions.GroupNavigation

  Add a utility function isOnAnyVisibleWS :: Query Bool to allow easy cycling between all windows on all visible workspaces.

• XMonad.Hooks.WallpaperSetter

  Preserve the aspect ratio of wallpapers that xmonad sets. When previous versions would distort images to fit the screen size, it will now find a best fit by cropping instead.

• XMonad.Util.Themes

  Add adwaitaTheme and adwaitaDarkTheme to match their respective GTK themes.

• ‘XMonad.Layout.BinarySpacePartition’

  Add a new SplitShiftDirectional message that allows moving windows by splitting its neighbours.

• XMonad.Prompt.FuzzyMatch

  Make fuzzy sort show shorter strings first.

0.15

Breaking Changes

• XMonad.Layout.Groups & XMonad.Layout.Groups.Helpers The layout will no longer perform refreshes inside of its message handling. If you have been relying on it to in your xmonad.hs, you will need to start sending its messages in a manner that properly handles refreshing, e.g. with sendMessage.

New Modules

• XMonad.Util.Purex

  Unlike the opaque IO actions that X actions can wrap, regular reads from the XConf and modifications to the XState are fundamentally pure – contrary to the current treatment of such actions in most xmonad code. Pure modifications to the WindowSet can be readily composed, but due to the need for those modifications to be properly handled by windows, other pure changes to the XState cannot be interleaved with those changes to the WindowSet without superfluous refreshes, hence breaking composability.

  This module aims to rectify that situation by drawing attention to it and providing PureX: a pure type with the same monadic interface to state as X. The XLike typeclass enables writing actions generic over the two monads; if pure, existing X actions can be generalised with only a change to the type signature. Various other utilities are provided, in particular the defile function which is needed by end-users.

Bug Fixes and Minor Changes

• Add support for GHC 8.6.1.

• XMonad.Actions.MessageHandling Refresh-performing functions updated to better reflect the new sendMessage.

0.14

Breaking Changes

• XMonad.Layout.Spacing

  Rewrite XMonad.Layout.Spacing. Borders are no longer uniform but composed of four sides each with its own border width. The screen and window borders are now separate and can be independently toggled on/off. The screen border examines the window/rectangle list resulting from ‘runLayout’ rather than the stack, which makes it compatible with layouts such as the builtin Full. The child layout will always be called with the screen border. If only a single window is displayed (and smartBorder enabled), it will be expanded into the original layout rectangle. Windows that are displayed but not part of the stack, such as those created by ‘XMonad.Layout.Decoration’, will be shifted out of the way, but not scaled (not possible for windows created by XMonad). This isn’t perfect, so you might want to disable Spacing on such layouts.

• XMonad.Util.SpawnOnce

  • Added spawnOnOnce, spawnNOnOnce and spawnAndDoOnce. These are useful in startup hooks to shift spawned windows to a specific workspace.

• Adding handling of modifySpacing message in smartSpacing and smartSpacingWithEdge layout modifier

• XMonad.Actions.GridSelect

  • Added field gs_bordercolor to GSConfig to specify border color.

• XMonad.Layout.Minimize

  Though the interface it offers is quite similar, this module has been almost completely rewritten. The new XMonad.Actions.Minimize contains several functions that allow interaction with minimization window state. If you are using this module, you must upgrade your configuration to import X.A.Minimize and use maximizeWindow and withLastMinimized instead of sending messages to Minimized layout. XMonad.Hooks.RestoreMinimized has been completely deprecated, and its functions have no effect.

• XMonad.Prompt.Unicode

  • unicodePrompt :: String -> XPConfig -> X () now additionally takes a filepath to the UnicodeData.txt file containing unicode data.

• XMonad.Actions.PhysicalScreens

  getScreen, viewScreen, sendToScreen, onNextNeighbour, onPrevNeighbour now need a extra parameter of type ScreenComparator. This allow the user to specify how he want his screen to be ordered default value are:

  • def(same as verticalScreenOrderer) will keep previous behavior
  • verticalScreenOrderer
  • horizontalScreenOrderer

  One can build his custom ScreenOrderer using:

  • screenComparatorById (allow to order by Xinerama id)
  • screenComparatorByRectangle (allow to order by screen coordonate)
  • ScreenComparator (allow to mix ordering by screen coordonate and xinerama id)

• XMonad.Util.WorkspaceCompare

  getXineramaPhysicalWsCompare now need a extra argument of type ScreenComparator defined in XMonad.Actions.PhysicalScreens (see changelog of this module for more information)

• XMonad.Hooks.EwmhDesktops

  • Simplify ewmhDesktopsLogHookCustom, and remove the gnome-panel specific remapping of all visible windows to the active workspace (#216).
  • Handle workspace renames that might be occuring in the custom function that is provided to ewmhDesktopsLogHookCustom.

• XMonad.Hooks.DynamicLog

  • Support xmobar’s <action> and <raw> tags; see xmobarAction and xmobarRaw.

• XMonad.Layout.NoBorders

  The layout now maintains a list of windows that never have borders, and a list of windows that always have borders. Use BorderMessage to manage these lists and the accompanying event hook (borderEventHook) to remove destroyed windows from them. Also provides the hasBorder manage hook.

  Two new conditions have been added to Ambiguity: OnlyLayoutFloat and OnlyLayoutFloatBelow; OnlyFloat was renamed to OnlyScreenFloat. See the documentation for more information.

  The type signature of hiddens was changed to accept a new Rectangle parameter representing the bounds of the parent layout, placed after the WindowSet parameter. Anyone defining a new instance of SetsAmbiguous will need to update their configuration. For example, replace “hiddens amb wset mst wrs =” either with “hiddens amb wset _ mst wrs =” or to make use of the new parameter with “hiddens amb wset lr mst wrs =”.

• XMonad.Actions.MessageFeedback

  • Follow the naming conventions of XMonad.Operations. Functions returning X () are named regularly (previously these ended in underscore) while those returning X Bool are suffixed with an uppercase ‘B’.
  • Provide all X Bool and SomeMessage variations for sendMessage and sendMessageWithNoRefresh, not just sendMessageWithNoRefreshToCurrent (renamed from send).
  • The new tryInOrderB and tryMessageB functions accept a parameter of type SomeMessage -> X Bool, which means you are no longer constrained to the behavior of the sendMessageWithNoRefreshToCurrent dispatcher.
  • The send*Messages* family of funtions allows for sequencing arbitrary sets of messages with minimal refresh. It makes little sense for these functions to support custom message dispatchers.
  • Remain backwards compatible. Maintain deprecated aliases of all renamed functions:
    • send -> sendMessageWithNoRefreshToCurrentB
    • sendSM -> sendSomeMessageWithNoRefreshToCurrentB
    • sendSM_ -> sendSomeMessageWithNoRefreshToCurrent
    • tryInOrder -> tryInOrderWithNoRefreshToCurrentB
    • tryInOrder_ -> tryInOrderWithNoRefreshToCurrent
    • tryMessage -> tryMessageWithNoRefreshToCurrentB
    • tryMessage_ -> tryMessageWithNoRefreshToCurrent

New Modules

• XMonad.Layout.MultiToggle.TabBarDecoration

  Provides a simple transformer for use with XMonad.Layout.MultiToggle to dynamically toggle XMonad.Layout.TabBarDecoration.

• XMonad.Hooks.RefocusLast

  Provides hooks and actions that keep track of recently focused windows on a per workspace basis and automatically refocus the last window on loss of the current (if appropriate as determined by user specified criteria).

• XMonad.Layout.StateFull

  Provides StateFull: a stateful form of Full that does not misbehave when floats are focused, and the FocusTracking layout transformer by means of which StateFull is implemented. FocusTracking simply holds onto the last true focus it was given and continues to use it as the focus for the transformed layout until it sees another. It can be used to improve the behaviour of a child layout that has not been given the focused window.

• XMonad.Actions.SwapPromote

  Module for tracking master window history per workspace, and associated functions for manipulating the stack using such history.

• XMonad.Actions.CycleWorkspaceByScreen

  A new module that allows cycling through previously viewed workspaces in the order they were viewed most recently on the screen where cycling is taking place.

  Also provides the repeatableAction helper function which can be used to build actions that can be repeated while a modifier key is held down.

• XMonad.Prompt.FuzzyMatch

  Provides a predicate fuzzyMatch that is much more lenient in matching completions in XMonad.Prompt than the default prefix match. Also provides a function fuzzySort that allows sorting the fuzzy matches by “how well” they match.

• XMonad.Utils.SessionStart

  A new module that allows to query if this is the first time xmonad is started of the session, or a xmonad restart.

  Currently needs manual setting of the session start flag. This could be automated when this moves to the core repository.

• XMonad.Layout.MultiDishes

  A new layout based on Dishes, however it accepts additional configuration to allow multiple windows within a single stack.

• XMonad.Util.Rectangle

  A new module for handling pixel rectangles.

• XMonad.Layout.BinaryColumn

  A new module which provides a simple grid layout, halving the window sizes of each window after master.

  This is similar to Column, but splits the window in a way that maintains window sizes upon adding & removing windows as well as the option to specify a minimum window size.

Bug Fixes and Minor Changes

• XMonad.Layout.Grid

  Fix as per issue #223; Grid will no longer calculate more columns than there are windows.

• XMonad.Hooks.FadeWindows

  Added support for GHC version 8.4.x by adding a Semigroup instance for Monoids

• XMonad.Hooks.WallpaperSetter

  Added support for GHC version 8.4.x by adding a Semigroup instance for Monoids

• XMonad.Hooks.Mosaic

  Added support for GHC version 8.4.x by adding a Semigroup instance for Monoids

• XMonad.Actions.Navigation2D

  Added sideNavigation and a parameterised variant, providing a navigation strategy with fewer quirks for tiled layouts using X.L.Spacing.

• XMonad.Layout.Fullscreen

  The fullscreen layouts will now not render any window that is totally obscured by fullscreen windows.

• XMonad.Layout.Gaps

  Extended the sendMessage interface with ModifyGaps to allow arbitrary modifications to the GapSpec.

• XMonad.Layout.Groups

  Added a new ModifyX message type that allows the modifying function to return values in the X monad.

• XMonad.Actions.Navigation2D

  Generalised (and hence deprecated) hybridNavigation to hybridOf.

• XMonad.Layout.LayoutHints

  Preserve the window order of the modified layout, except for the focused window that is placed on top. This fixes an issue where the border of the focused window in certain situations could be rendered below borders of unfocused windows. It also has a lower risk of interfering with the modified layout.

• XMonad.Layout.MultiColumns

  The focused window is placed above the other windows if they would be made to overlap due to a layout modifier. (As long as it preserves the window order.)

• XMonad.Actions.GridSelect

  • The vertical centring of text in each cell has been improved.

• XMonad.Actions.SpawnOn

  • Bind windows spawns by child processes of the original window to the same workspace as the original window.

• XMonad.Util.WindowProperties

  • Added the ability to test if a window has a tag from XMonad.Actions.TagWindows

• XMonad.Layout.Magnifier

  • Handle IncMasterN messages.

• XMonad.Util.EZConfig

  • Can now parse Latin1 keys, to better accommodate users with non-US keyboards.

• XMonad.Actions.Submap

  Establish pointer grab to avoid freezing X, when button press occurs after submap key press. And terminate submap at button press in the same way, as we do for wrong key press.

• XMonad.Hooks.SetWMName

  Add function getWMName.

• XMonad.Hooks.ManageHelpers

  Make type of ManageHook combinators more general.

• XMonad.Prompt

  Export insertString.

• XMonad.Prompt.Window

  • New function: windowMultiPrompt for using mkXPromptWithModes with window prompts.

• XMonad.Hooks.WorkspaceHistory

  • Now supports per screen history.

• XMonad.Layout.ComboP

  • New PartitionWins message to re-partition all windows into the configured sub-layouts. Useful when window properties have changed and you want to re-sort windows into the appropriate sub-layout.

• XMonad.Actions.Minimize

  • Now has withFirstMinimized and withFirstMinimized' so you can perform actions with both the last and first minimized windows easily.

• XMonad.Config.Gnome

  • Update logout key combination (modm+shift+Q) to work with modern

• XMonad.Prompt.Pass

  • New function passTypePrompt which uses xdotool to type in a password from the store, bypassing the clipboard.
  • New function passEditPrompt for editing a password from the store.
  • Now handles password labels with spaces and special characters inside them.

• XMonad.Prompt.Unicode

  • Persist unicode data cache across XMonad instances due to ExtensibleState now used instead of unsafePerformIO.
  • typeUnicodePrompt :: String -> XPConfig -> X () provided to insert the Unicode character via xdotool instead of copying it to the paste buffer.
  • mkUnicodePrompt :: String -> [String] -> String -> XPConfig -> X () acts as a generic function to pass the selected Unicode character to any program.

• XMonad.Prompt.AppendFile

  • New function appendFilePrompt' which allows for transformation of the string passed by a user before writing to a file.

• XMonad.Hooks.DynamicLog

  • Added a new function dzenWithFlags which allows specifying the arguments passed to dzen2 invocation. The behaviour of current dzen function is unchanged.

• XMonad.Util.Dzen

  • Now provides functions fgColor and bgColor to specify foreground and background color, align and slaveAlign to set text alignment, and lineCount to enable a second (slave) window that displays lines beyond the initial (title) one.

• XMonad.Hooks.DynamicLog

  • Added optional ppVisibleNoWindows to differentiate between empty and non-empty visible workspaces in pretty printing.

• XMonad.Actions.DynamicWorkspaceOrder

  • Added updateName and removeName to better control ordering when workspace names are changed or workspaces are removed.

• XMonad.Config.Azerty

  • Added belgianConfig and belgianKeys to support Belgian AZERTY keyboards, which are slightly different from the French ones in the top row.

0.13 (February 10, 2017)

Breaking Changes

• The type of completionKey (of XPConfig record) has been changed from KeySym to (KeyMask, KeySym). The default value for this is still bound to the Tab key.

• New constructor CenteredAt Rational Rational added for XMonad.Prompt.XPPosition.

• XMonad.Prompt now stores its history file in the XMonad cache directory in a file named prompt-history.

New Modules

• XMonad.Layout.SortedLayout

  A new LayoutModifier that sorts a given layout by a list of properties. The order of properties in the list determines the order of windows in the final layout. Any unmatched windows go to the end of the order.

• XMonad.Prompt.Unicode

  A prompt to search a unicode character by its name, and put it into the clipboard.

• XMonad.Util.Ungrab

  Release xmonad’s keyboard and pointer grabs immediately, so screen grabbers and lock utilities, etc. will work. Replaces the short sleep hackaround.

• XMonad.Util.Loggers.NamedScratchpad

  A collection of Loggers (see XMonad.Util.Loggers) for NamedScratchpads (see XMonad.Util.NamedScratchpad).

• XMonad.Util.NoTaskbar

  Utility function and ManageHook to mark a window to be ignored by EWMH taskbars and pagers. Useful for NamedScratchpad windows, since you will usually be taken to the NSP workspace by them.

Bug Fixes and Minor Changes

• XMonad.Hooks.ManageDocks,

  • Fix a very annoying bug where taskbars/docs would be covered by windows.

  • Also fix a bug that caused certain Gtk and Qt application to have issues displaying menus and popups.

• XMonad.Layout.LayoutBuilder

  Merge all functionality from XMonad.Layout.LayoutBuilderP into XMonad.Layout.LayoutBuilder.

• XMonad.Actions.WindowGo

  • Fix raiseNextMaybe cycling between 2 workspaces only.

• XMonad.Actions.UpdatePointer

  • Fix bug when cursor gets stuck in one of the corners.

• XMonad.Actions.DynamicProjects

  • Switching away from a dynamic project that contains no windows automatically deletes that project’s workspace.

    The project itself was already being deleted, this just deletes the workspace created for it as well.

  • Added function to change the working directory (changeProjectDirPrompt)

  • All of the prompts are now multiple mode prompts. Try using the changeModeKey in a prompt and see what happens!

0.12 (December 14, 2015)

Breaking Changes

• XMonad.Actions.UpdatePointer.updatePointer arguments were changed. This allows including aspects of both of the TowardsCentre and Relative methods. To keep the same behavior, replace the entry in the left column with the entry on the right:

  < 0.12	>= 0.12
  updatePointer Nearest	updatePointer (0.5, 0.5) (1,1)
  updatePointer (Relative x y)	updatePointer (x,y) (0,0)
  updatePointer (TowardsCentre x y)	updatePointer (0.5,0.5) (x,y)

New Modules

• XMonad.Actions.AfterDrag

  Perform an action after the current mouse drag is completed.

• XMonad.Actions.DynamicProjects

  Imbues workspaces with additional features so they can be treated as individual project areas.

• XMonad.Actions.LinkWorkspaces

  Provides bindings to add and delete links between workspaces. It is aimed at providing useful links between workspaces in a multihead setup. Linked workspaces are viewed at the same time.

• XMonad.Config.Bepo

  This module fixes some of the keybindings for the francophone among you who use a BEPO keyboard layout. Based on XMonad.Config.Azerty

• XMonad.Config.Dmwit

  Daniel Wagner’s configuration.

• XMonad.Config.Mate

  This module provides a config suitable for use with the MATE desktop environment.

• XMonad.Config.Prime

  A draft of a brand new config syntax for xmonad.

• XMonad.Hooks.DynamicProperty

  Module to apply a ManageHook to an already-mapped window when a property changes. This would commonly be used to match browser windows by title, since the final title will only be set after (a) the window is mapped, (b) its document has been loaded, (c) all load-time scripts have run.

• XMonad.Hooks.ManageDebug

  A manageHook and associated logHook for debugging ManageHooks. Simplest usage: wrap your xmonad config in the debugManageHook combinator. Or use debugManageHookOn for a triggerable version, specifying the triggering key sequence in XMonad.Util.EZConfig syntax. Or use the individual hooks in whatever way you see fit.

• XMonad.Hooks.WallpaperSetter

  Log hook which changes the wallpapers depending on visible workspaces.

• XMonad.Hooks.WorkspaceHistory

  Keeps track of workspace viewing order.

• XMonad.Layout.AvoidFloats

  Find a maximum empty rectangle around floating windows and use that area to display non-floating windows.

• XMonad.Layout.BinarySpacePartition

  Layout where new windows will split the focused window in half, based off of BSPWM.

• XMonad.Layout.Dwindle

  Three layouts: The first, Spiral, is a reimplementation of XMonad.Layout.Spiral.spiral with, at least to me, more intuitive semantics. The second, Dwindle, is inspired by a similar layout in awesome and produces the same sequence of decreasing window sizes as Spiral but pushes the smallest windows into a screen corner rather than the centre. The third, Squeeze arranges all windows in one row or in one column, with geometrically decreasing sizes.

• XMonad.Layout.Hidden

  Similar to XMonad.Layout.Minimize but completely removes windows from the window set so XMonad.Layout.BoringWindows isn’t necessary. Perfect companion to XMonad.Layout.BinarySpacePartition since it can be used to move windows to another part of the BSP tree.

• XMonad.Layout.IfMax

  Provides IfMax layout, which will run one layout if there are maximum N windows on workspace, and another layout, when number of windows is greater than N.

• XMonad.Layout.PerScreen

  Configure layouts based on the width of your screen; use your favorite multi-column layout for wide screens and a full-screen layout for small ones.

• XMonad.Layout.Stoppable

  This module implements a special kind of layout modifier, which when applied to a layout, causes xmonad to stop all non-visible processes. In a way, this is a sledge-hammer for applications that drain power. For example, given a web browser on a stoppable workspace, once the workspace is hidden the web browser will be stopped.

• XMonad.Prompt.ConfirmPrompt

  A module for setting up simple confirmation prompts for keybindings.

• XMonad.Prompt.Pass

  This module provides 3 XMonad.Prompts to ease passwords manipulation (generate, read, remove) via pass.

• XMonad.Util.RemoteWindows

  This module implements a proper way of finding out whether the window is remote or local.

• XMonad.Util.SpawnNamedPipe

  A module for spawning a pipe whose Handle lives in the xmonad state.

• XMonad.Util.WindowState

  Functions for saving per-window data.

Miscellaneous Changes

• Fix issue #9: XMonad.Prompt.Shell searchPredicate is ignored, defaults to isPrefixOf

• Fix moveHistory when alwaysHighlight is enabled

• XMonad.Actions.DynamicWorkspaceGroups now exports addRawWSGroup

• Side tabs were added to the tabbed layout

• XMonad/Layout/IndependentScreens now exports marshallSort

• XMonad/Hooks/UrgencyHook now exports clearUrgency

• Exceptions are now caught when finding commands on PATH in Prompt.Shell

• Switched to Data.Default wherever possible

• XMonad.Layout.IndependentScreens now exports whenCurrentOn

• XMonad.Util.NamedActions now exports addDescrKeys'

• EWMH DEMANDS_ATTENTION support added to UrgencyHook

• New useTransientFor modifier in XMonad.Layout.TrackFloating

• Added the ability to remove arbitrary workspaces

0.9 (October 26, 2009)

Updates that Require Changes in xmonad.hs

• XMonad.Hooks.EwmhDesktops no longer uses layoutHook, the ewmhDesktopsLayout modifier has been removed from xmonad-contrib. It uses logHook, handleEventHook, and startupHook instead and provides a convenient function ewmh to add EWMH support to a defaultConfig.

• Most DynamicLog users can continue with configs unchanged, but users of the quickbar functions xmobar or dzen will need to change xmonad.hs: their types have changed to allow easier composition with other XConfig modifiers. The dynamicLogDzen and dynamicLogXmobar functions have been removed.

• WindowGo or safeSpawn users may need to change command lines due to safeSpawn changes.

• People explicitly referencing the “SP” scratchpad workspace should change it to “NSP” which is also used by the new Util.NamedScratchpad module.

• (Optional) People who explicitly use swapMaster in key or mouse bindings should change it to shiftMaster. It’s the current default used where swapMaster had been used previously. It works better than swapMaster when using floating and tiled windows together on the same workspace.

See Also

https://wiki.haskell.org/Xmonad/Notable_changes_since_0.8