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Xmonad

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xmonad

xmonad in tiling mode
Author	Spencer Janssen, Don Stewart, Jason Creighton
Latest release	0.5 / 9 December 2007
Preview release	latest Darcs revision / (snapshot)
OS	POSIX-compatible
Platform	Cross-platform; requires X Window and GHC
Natural language(s)	English
Status	Alpha
Genre	Window manager
License	BSD-3
Website	http://www.xmonad.org/

xmonad is a moderately popular^[1] tiling window manager for the X Window System, written in the functional programming language Haskell. Begun in March 2007, it is similar to dwm, larswm, StumpWM and other members of the tiling window manager family, in that it strives to make it possible for the user to productively manage windows without the use of the mouse. xmonad is distributed on a wide range of Unix-like operating systems, including Arch Linux^[2], Debian^[3], Ubuntu^[4], Gentoo^[5], FreeBSD^[6], NetBSD^[7] and OpenBSD^[8]. While originally a clone of dwm (derivative in areas such as default keybindings), xmonad supports features not available to dwm users, such as Xinerama (for multihead displays),^[9]^[10] per-workspace layout, tiling reflection, state preservation, layout mirroring, GNOME support and per-screen status bars; it can be customised by modifying an external configuration file and 'reloaded' while running.^[11] XMonad features have begun to influence other tiling window managers - dwm has borrowed "urgency hooks" from XMonad^[12], has been mulling Xinerama support, and reimplemented XMonad's Fibonacci layout^[13]. Extensions to the core system, including emulation of other window managers and unusual layout algorithms, such as window tiling based on the Fibonacci spiral, have been implemented by the active community^[14]and are available as a library^[15]. In addition to the superfluity of the mouse, the xmonad developers make heavy use of semi-formal methods and program derivation for improving reliability and enabling a total line of code count less than 1100, as of version 0.5; window manager properties (such as the behavior of window focus) are checked through use of QuickCheck. This emphasis makes xmonad unusual in a number of ways; besides being the first window manager written in Haskell, it is also the first to use the zipper data structure for automatically managing focus, and its core has been proven to be safe with respect to pattern matches,^[16] contributing further to reliability. The developers write:

"xmonad is a tiling window manager for the X Window system, implemented, configured and dynamically extensible in Haskell. This demonstration presents the case that software dominated by side effects can be developed with the precision and efficiency we expect from Haskell by utilising purely functional data structures, an expressive type system, extended static checking and property- based testing. In addition, we describe the use of Haskell as an application configuration and extension language."^[17]

It makes use of Haskell features and tools such as: QuickCheck, GHC extensions like pattern guards, monads, monad transformers, zippers, and the Cabal packaging system, in addition to Haskell bindings to Xlib (with rebinding to XCB planned when the Haskell bindings are released).

References

^ The Debian popularity contest places it as more popular than StumpWM but not as popular as Dwm or Ion3[1], although this undercounts the many users who manage local installations, do not participate, or who use other distros; for comparison, Arch Linux has more votes for XMonad than for dwm
^ See the Arch package page
^ Debian package: xmonad. debian.org (2007-12-23). Retrieved on 2007-12-23.
^ Ubuntu package: xmonad. Ubuntu (2007-12-23). Retrieved on 2007-12-23.
^ Gentoo packages: xmonad. Gentoo (2007-12-16). Retrieved on 2007-12-23.
^ FreeBSD package: xmonad. freebsd.org (2007-12-23). Retrieved on 2007-12-23.
^ NetBSD package: xmonad. NetBSD (2007-12-10). Retrieved on 2007-12-23.
^ OpenBSD package: xmonad. OpenBSD (2007-11-20). Retrieved on 2007-12-23.
^ Keyboard-Driven Environments Open a New Window. OSnews (2007-05-31). Retrieved on 2007-05-31.
^ xmonad 0.4 Released. OSnews (2007-10-19). Retrieved on 2007-12-23.
^ Through a combination of swiftly re-compiling and then execing the new XMonad binary; see Haskell Weekly News: April 27, 2007. Haskell Weekly News (2007-04-27). Retrieved on 2007-05-23.
^ See the developer discussion on the dwm mailing list
^ Suckless.org: Fibonacci layouts patch
^ Xmonad users generate significant traffic in the #xmonad IRC channel and the XMonad mailing list; in addition, there are a significant number of commits to the extension library from non-core devs (see the XMonad statistic page)
^ xmonad: Contributed code. xmonad.org (2007-05-22). Retrieved on 2007-05-23.
^ "Does xmonad crash? On proving pattern coverage in xmonad with Catch"; "Preconditions on XMonad"; see also "Detecting pattern-match failures in Haskell"
^ Stewart & Janssen, 2007

Stewart, Don; Janssen, Spencer (September 2007). "XMonad: A Tiling Window Manager". Haskell '07: Proceedings of the ACM SIGPLAN workshop on Haskell workshop: 119. ISBN 978-1-59593-674-5. Retrieved on 2007-10-22.
- Association for Computing Machinery archive
- Paper presentation -(video; .mov)