XMonad.Actions.Contexts

This is an XMonad extension that allows to switch the current set of workspaces with other named sets. This is quite useful if you use multiple workspaces to work on a single project. Then you can create a context per project and temporarily make sure you don't need to see irrelevant workspaces.

See this screencast for a demo.

Usage

Hold my hand

Clone this repo into your ~/.xmonad/lib directory or make it available to you in another way.

git clone git@github.com:Procrat/xmonad-contexts ~/.xmonad/lib/

I find this extension particularly enjoyable in combination with a menu, like dmenu. So I am going to assume you have it (or something similar) installed.

Add the following to the imports of your ~/.xmonad/xmonad.hs.

import qualified XMonad.Util.Dmenu       as D
import qualified XMonad.Actions.Contexts as C

Then add a key binding that switches contexts and creates it if it did not exist, and a key binding that deletes a context. This example uses XMonad.Util.EZConfig-style key bindings, but this is not necessary.

    ...
    , ("M-s", C.listContextNames >>= D.dmenu >>= C.createAndSwitchContext)
    , ("M-S-s", C.listContextNames >>= D.dmenu >>= C.deleteContext >> return ())
    ...

As a final step, which is required to make your layouts in non-visible contexts persistent across restarts of XMonad, you have to make the following instance where myLayout is the layout you defined in the layoutHook field of your XMonad configuration.

{-# LANGUAGE FlexibleInstances #-}
import XMonad (readsLayout)

instance Read (Layout Window) where
    readsPrec _ = readsLayout (Layout myLayout)

Just give me the API

I think the function names are pretty self-explanatory. If they are not, please tell me so. Usage of them requires an orphan instance of Read (Layout Window) in your xmonad.hs to be able to make layouts persistents across restarts of XMonad. If there is a way to work around this hack, I would love to know!

type ContextName = String

createContext          :: Read (Layout Window) => ContextName -> X ()
switchContext          :: Read (Layout Window) => ContextName -> X Bool
createAndSwitchContext :: Read (Layout Window) => ContextName -> X ()
deleteContext          :: Read (Layout Window) => ContextName -> X Bool
showCurrentContextName :: Read (Layout Window) => X String
listContextNames       :: Read (Layout Window) => X [ContextName]
defaultContextName     :: ContextName

Similar extensions

As far as I know, there isn't really another extension like this. It may be vaguely related to X.A.Plane, X.A.DynamicWorkspaceGroups and X.L.IndependentScreens.

The most important difference between those extensions and this one is how the workspaces are internally handled. Most extensions manipulate the workspaces that XMonad keeps track of internally. This extension leaves those workspace sets completely intact, but just switches to completely other ones. One of the advantages is that this means that all your key bindings and extensions that manage workspaces can remain intact!

Troubleshooting

Nothing happens when I try to switch. I am not using dmenu, but <X>.

I encountered a similar issue when using dmwit's yeganesh. The problem is that XMonad cleans up child processes. In this particular case, it cleaned up yeganesh's call to dmenu. To fix this, temporarily disable XMonad's signal handlers in the call to the menu.

import XMonad

safeMenu :: [String] -> X String
safeMenu options = do
    uninstallSignalHandlers
    choice <- D.menu "yeganesh" options
    installSignalHandlers
    return choice

Then replace the dmenu call by a call to this function.

    ...
    , ("M-s", C.listContextNames >>= safeMenu >>= C.createAndSwitchContext)
    , ("M-S-s", C.listContextNames >>= safeMenu >>= C.deleteContext >> return ())
    ...