pyFvwm: Python 3 Configuration System for Fvwm

pyFvwm is a configuration system for fvwm written in Python. This configuration system consists of:

• A configuration database which tracks and stores configuration variables in key + value pairs. The database uses a python dictionary written as a YAML file to be human friendly.

• Configuration files, called fvwm2rc files, which are fvwm configuration files plus an optional pyFvwm header. The header is a python function that describes how to use the pyFvwm configuration to generate values of variables in the configuration.

• A fvwm2rc builder, which takes an .fvwm2rc configuration file and builds it into a configuration for fvwm using the pyFvwm variables. This builder can either build a single .fvwm2rc file, or it can build a collection of files, called a theme.

• Utilities are additional tools that can be used to configure, or help manage the configuration database and fvwm2rc files. So far there is the main shell script pyfvwm and a collection of Gtk 3 configuration utilities using pyGObjects.

Installation

pyFvwm is a collection of Python 3 scripts and needs to have Python 3 and some additional Python libraries installed. See INSTALL.md for details and install instructions.

Usage

The main configuration script is pyfvwm. The script can be used to build a fvwm configuration as follows.

pyfvwm build

This will output "Read $HOME/.pyfvwm/.fvwm2rc". The configuration file was built and saved at $HOME/.pyfvwm/.fvwm2rc, then the script told fvwm to Read that file (if fvwm was listening).

The commands issued to pyfvwm will try to match based off the command starting with the command issued. For example you could also build the configuration file with pyfvwm b or pyfvwm buil.

Besides being able to build a full theme you can build and list individual fvwm2rc files. To list all fvwm2rc files run

pyfvwm fvwm2rc list

or just pyfvwm f l or even pyfvwm f for short. This will list all available configuration files both system and user. Any system files with a * are overridden by a user file of the same name.

pyfvwm can also format one of the configuration files. For example to format the configuration file BUE/Decor.fvwm2rc the full command would be

pyfvwm fvwm2rc BUE/Decor

This could be shortened to pyfvwm fvwm bue/decor (matching is not case sensitive) or even pyfvwm f bue/d. You can't reduce this further because bue would match multiple configurations for the Basic Use Environment (BUE) configurations.

To see a full list of commands run pyfvwm help

Using pyFvwm with Fvwm

Once pyfvwm is working above, add the following to your Fvwm configuration file, $HOME/.fvwm/config, to import the configuration to Fvwm. To do this, you only need to add the following

PipeRead `pyfvwm init $[vp.width] $[vp.height]`

That will be all you need in your fvwm configuration file. The init option provides the width and height so pyFvwm can use this to build configurations based on the size of the screen.

Basic User Environment