Exploring dwl-guile: A Wayland Compositor for Guile and Guix

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I've mentioned a few times recently that I've really enjoyed using Wayland via Sway recently. It's the future! However, we haven't really seen many Lisp or Scheme-based compositors yet.

dwl-guile is a fork of the dwl Wayland Compositor (which is a port of dwm).

dwl-guile was developed to be used with GNU Guix! There is a custom Guix channel which also provides a Guix Home service for configuring the window manager:

https://github.com/engstrand-config/home-service-dwl-guile

Today we'll see if we can get dwl-guile up and running and see if it can be a solid addition to our modern, Lisp-based system crafting toolset!

To get things running, I added the home-service-dwl-guile channel to my Guix Channel configuration:

(channel
  (name 'home-service-dwl-guile)
  (url "https://github.com/engstrand-config/home-service-dwl-guile")
  (branch "main")
  (introduction
    (make-channel-introduction
      "314453a87634d67e914cfdf51d357638902dd9fe"
      (openpgp-fingerprint
        "C9BE B8A0 4458 FDDF 1268 1B39 029D 8EB7 7E18 D68C"))))

I then installed dwl-guile and created a configuration file called dwl-config.scm.

I ran it like this:

dwl-guile -c dwl-config.scm

;; Inhibit the defaults so that we can control the keys!
(setq inhibit-defaults? #t)

;; THINGS TO FIGURE OUT:
;; - Setting the background image (swaybg?)
;; - Fixing ctrl:nocaps
;; - Settings desired layouts and switching them
;; - Set up swaylock/swayidle

;; Start the repl, connect via M-x geiser-connect-local RET /tmp/dwl-guile.socket RET
(dwl:start-repl-server)

(set-monitor-rules
 '((name . "HDMI-A-1")
   (x . 0) (y . 0)
   (masters . 1)
   (master-factor . 0.55)
   (width . 2560)
   (height . 1440)
   (scale . 2))

 `((name . "eDP-2")
   (width . 3840)
   (height . 2160)
   (scale . 2)
   (x . 2560) (y . ,(- (/ 2160 2)
                       (/ 1440 2)))))

(set-xkb-rules '((layout . "us")
                 (options . "ctrl:nocaps")))

(setq tags (list "chat" "dev" "web" "media" "misc"))

(dwl:set-tty-keys "C-M")
(dwl:set-tag-keys "s" "s-S")

(set-keys "s-<space>" '(dwl:spawn "fuzzel" "--no-fuzzy")
          ;; (dwl:spawn "fuzzel -w 50 -x 8 -y 8 -r 3 -b 232635ff -t A6Accdff -s A6Accdff -S 232635ff -C c792eacc -m c792eacc -f \"Iosevka Aile:weight=light:size=11\" --no-fuzzy --icon-theme=\"Papirus-Dark\"")
          "s-<return>" '(dwl:spawn "emacsclient" "-c")
          "s-j" '(dwl:focus-stack 1)
          "s-k" '(dwl:focus-stack -1)
          "s-l" '(dwl:change-master-factor 0.05)
          "s-h" '(dwl:change-master-factor -0.05)
          "s-<page-up>" '(dwl:change-masters 1)
          "s-<page-down>" '(dwl:change-masters -1)
          "s-t" '(dwl:cycle-layout 1)
          "s-<left>" '(dwl:focus-monitor 'DIRECTION-LEFT)
          "s-<right>" '(dwl:focus-monitor 'DIRECTION-RIGHT)
          "s-<up>" '(dwl:focus-monitor 'DIRECTION-UP)
          "s-<down>" '(dwl:focus-monitor 'DIRECTION-DOWN)
          "s-S-<left>" '(dwl:tag-monitor 'DIRECTION-LEFT)
          "s-S-<right>" '(dwl:tag-monitor 'DIRECTION-RIGHT)
          "s-S-<up>" '(dwl:tag-monitor 'DIRECTION-UP)
          "s-S-<down>" '(dwl:tag-monitor 'DIRECTION-DOWN)
          "s-q" 'dwl:kill-client
          "s-<tab>" 'dwl:view
          "s-S-0" '(dwl:view 0) ;; 0 will show all tags
          "s-f" 'dwl:toggle-fullscreen
          "S-s-<space>" 'dwl:toggle-floating
          "S-s-q" 'dwl:quit
          "s-<mouse-left>" 'dwl:move
          "s-<mouse-middle>" 'dwl:toggle-floating
          "s-<mouse-right>" 'dwl:resize)

;; Configure gaps
(dwl:change-gaps 5)

;; Launch helpful programs after init
(add-hook! dwl:hook-startup
           (lambda ()
             (dwl:spawn "setxkbmap" "-option" "ctrl:nocaps")
             (dwl:spawn "waybar")
             (dwl:spawn "dunst")
             (dwl:spawn "nm-applet" "--indicator")
             (dwl:spawn "udiskie" "-t")
             (dwl:spawn "emacs")))