89-NEWS.md

NEWS

Awesome window manager framework version 4.0 changes

Awesome 4.0 is the first release of the v4 API level, breaking the proven v3.5 API level after 4 years. This requires to port the existing user configuration and extensions to the new API.

This document offers an overview of the new features and required changes for existing users.

New features

Input

Mouse move and resize handlers

The code used to resize and move clients has been refactored to allow plugins to be attached. This includes:

• display the client geometry in the wibar
• implement a resize grid
• implement delayed resizing (like Windows 3.11 and TWM)
• have touch-friendly resize handles (implemented by the Collision extension)
• allow window snapping (implemented)
• allow edge tiling (like Windows 7+ (AeroSnap) , KDE and Gnome) (implemented)
• move to the next tag when dragged to the edge (like KDE3) (disabled by default)

See:

• mouse
• client request::geometry

.

Edge tiling (AeroSnap)

Clients are now resized when dragged to the screen edge similar to other window managers. The width of the border can be controlled by the beautiful.snap_border_width theme variable. The edge shape with beautiful.snap_shape (see gears.shape) and can be disabled by setting

awful.mouse.snap.edge_enabled = false

Edge snapping

While this was already supported, this feature has been extensively extended. It can be disabled by setting

awful.mouse.snap.client_enabled = false

Hotkey popup

It is now possible to display the list of active keyboard shortcuts by pressing mod4 + s (hotkeys_popup.show_help).

See:

• awful.hotkeys_popup
• awful.hotkeys_popup.keys
• awful.hotkeys_popup.keys.vim
• awful.hotkeys_popup.widget

New tag and layout properties

Generic useless gap

Adds an empty space between clients.

See:

• tag
• tag.gap
• tag.gap_single_client

Master fill policies

Allows the layout to optionally take all the space when there is no "slave" client or to use a smaller screen area. For example, if only one terminal is present in a awful.layout.suit.tile.left layout, then instead of filling the whole screen, it wont be larger than it would otherwise be if there were more clients.

See:

• tag
• tag.master_fill_policy

Volatile

Tags can now be volatile. A volatile tag will be destroyed when its last client has been untagged. This is useful for temporary layouts or tags dedicated to a single client.

See:

• tag.volatile

The corner layout

A new client layout with a larger master client and both a vertical and an horizontal row of slave clients.

New client properties

• client.focusable is now read/write (compared to read only in the previous versions)
• client.valid tells if the client still really exist or if the object is waiting to be deleted
• client.floating is now a client property
• client.x / client.y / client.width / client.height are client.geometry aliases
• client.first_tag is a convenience wrapper for c:tags()[1]

Client signaling

There is now an awesome.unix_signal signal table with all platform specific signals and their indices. There is also an awesome.kill() function to send signals to clients. This can be used, among other thing, to pause and resume clients.

New client rules (awful.rules)

All of the new client properties can be used in rules. In addition, the following ones have been added:

• placement: use the awful.placement method (or combinations) to place the client. While older version of Awesome allowed to use callbacks here, it didn't support all corner cases such as titlebar offsets and border_width.
• titlebars_enabled: older versions of Awesome had a global variable to enable or disable titlebars. This is now delegated to the rules.
• new_tag: allows to create a tag for the client instead of using an existing one.
• The tag property has been expanded to also find tags from their name.
• The tags property now tries to merge the current tags into the array to fix some other properties.
• All geometry properties are now executed at once to avoid side effects.
• The focus is now going through the focus filters instead of being applied as-is (see the focus filter section).

Rules execution has been re-ordered to minimize the race conditions (one rule affecting the outcome of another). This may create a slightly different behavior for some users, but is usually considered to be an improvement.

User rules

It is now possible to register new rules by adding them to some awful.rules arrays. This can be used by modules to add extra functionalities or to avoid boilerplate code in callbacks.

• awful.rules.high_priority_properties: before most other rules are executed.
• awful.rules.extra_properties: together with normal rules.
• awful.rules.delayed_properties: after most other rules, but before focus.

Those extra rules also have the capability to mutate the current rule array.

New widgets

Widgets

Name	Example
wibox.widget.checkbox
wibox.widget.piechart
wibox.widget.progressbar
wibox.widget.slider

Containers

Name	Example
wibox.container.arcchart
wibox.container.radialprogressbar

Layouts

Name	Example
wibox.layout.ratio
wibox.layout.stack

Other widgets, like the taglist and tasklist, gained many new configuration features such as empty colors and shape.

See:

• The declarative layout system
• awful.widget.tasklist
• awful.widget.taglist

New APIs

The new and streamlined property system

Previously some core objects, such as clients or tags, were static. It wasn't possible to directly set new properties on them. This is now supported:

c.my_new_property = "bar"

Also all properties previously accessible from the awful module are now directly accessible on the object:

-- Before
awful.client.floating.set(c, true)

-- Now
c.floating = true

See the "deprecated" section below for the list of functions that have been replaced by properties or methods.

The widgets API also received a similar overhaul. Both getters/setters and the property APIs are now supported.

-- Before
mytextbox:set_text("Foobar")
myimagebox:set_resize(not myimagebox:get_resize())

-- Now
mytextbox.text = "Foobar"
myimagebox.resize = not myimagebox.resize

Awesome 4.0 restores a feature found in older versions of Awesome. All widgets now have properties again. While all :set_foo(bar) type accessors are still fully (and forever) supported, it is now possible to do .foo = bar and obj.foo = not obj.foo . This is supported for all official widgets, containers and layouts.

Declarative widget syntax is supported again

Awesome 4.0 re-introduces the declarative widget syntax. This feature was lost when Awesome 3.5 introduced the new (and much, much better) widget system. It is possible to do it again.

See:

• The declarative layout system

Most documentation examples have been adapted to use this syntax instead of the imperative one. Both syntaxes are fully supported.

For example:

-- Imperative
local l = wibox.layout.fized.horizontal()
local i = wibox.widget.imagebox()
local t = wibox.widget.textbox()

i:set_image("/path/to/awesomeness.png")
t:set_text("is awesome")

l:add(i)
l:add(t)

-- Declarative
local l = wibox.layout {
    {
        image  = "/path/to/awesomeness.png",
        widget = wibox.widget.imagebox
    }.
    {
        text   = "is awesome",
        widget = wibox.widget.textbox
    }.
    layout = wibox.layout.fized.horizontal
}

The request API

Awesome used to blindly allow requests from clients to steal focus or move them around. There are now handlers to block such requests. The request:: API is also used internally in Awesome itself to make previously hard-coded behavior more flexible.

• request::activate: When a client requests focus and/or being raised.
• request::geometry: When a client requests a position.
• request::screen: When a client needs a screen.
• request::select: When a tag wants to be selected.
• request::tag: When a client needs a tag.
• request::titlebars: When a client needs a titlebar.
• request::urgent: When a client requests attention.

See:

• awful.ewmh.tag
• awful.ewmh.geometry
• awful.ewmh.activate
• awful.ewmh.urgent
• awful.mouse.resize_handler

The defaults handlers are mostly located in the awful.ewmh module and comply with what the specification defines.

The placement API

While Awesome already had some basic placement function, the new API makes it possible to remove most hard-coded geometry handling code. From a user's point of view this API allows for rich floating window management using awful.rules.

It provides generic placement functions that work with:

• clients
• wiboxes
• the mouse
• anything with a :geometry() method

See:

• awful.placement

The shape API

This new API allows nicer visuals and more complex themes.

Also note that the client shape functionality was broken in 3.5 and has been fixed. See:

• gears.shape

The hierarchy API

The widget framework now produces a persistent model of its content rather than a volatile one during the wibox drawing. This allows for better introspection into the widget tree. This model is now exposed through the mouse::enter, mouse::press, mouse.current_widget and other APIs. This tree model also includes various matrices to convert positions from the screen coordinates to the one of the widgets (think of scaling and rotations).

This allows for interactive widgets such as a slider.

See:

• gears.hierarchy
• • Creating new widget

New themes

A new xresources theme has been added. It uses native X11 assets such as colors.

The default theme was improved with a more modern looking icon set.

Spawn and launcher improvements

Spawn

The newly renamed awful.spawn (previously awful.util.spawn) has been extended into a whole API. It is now possible to define rules directly through the spawn function. Note that this only works if the client properly supports the freedesktop.org startup notifications protocol. For example, to open a new urxvt in a new tag from the command line, use:

awesome-client  "require('awful.spawn')('urxvt', {new_tag=true})"

As another example, to launch a centered floating terminal in the currently selected tag of screen number 2:

awful.spawn("urxvt", {
    tag       = screen[2].selected_tag,
    placement = awful.placement.centered,
    floating  = true
})

See:

• awful.spawn
• awful.rules

All rule properties can be used, including the newly introduced placement ones (like above).

Launcher

awful.prompt gained many new features. One of them is the ability to add custom keyboard shortcuts and mutate the command. Paired with the new spawn features, it can be used to create mod4 + r shortcuts to spawn the clients with arguments and callbacks.

See:

• awful.prompt

Focus stealing filters.

It is now possible to add and manage filters to restrict what kind of focus stealing is allowed. It can be used to mute noisy applications or to implement tag level policies. Every way a client could claim focus, including those from within Awesome itself, now goes through the request filters.

See:

• awful.ewmh.add_activate_filter
• awful.ewmh.remove_activate_filter
• awful.ewmh.activate

Notification actions

Awesome now supports XDG notification (aka, naughty) actions.

See:

• naughty

Custom xproperties support

Awesome can now save some data in the X11 server itself. This allows to communicate with external applications or so save state across restarts.

There is also supported/used for persistent client properties.

Better XKB keyboard layout support

Awesome now has native support for keyboard layout detection and setting. Using setxkbmap to track the current layout is no longer necessary. This also includes a widget to view the current layout.

See:

• awesome.xkb_set_layout_group
• awesome.xkb_get_layout_group
• awesome.xkb_get_group_names
• wibox.widget.keyboardlayout

Other minor features

• awesome.composite_manager_running allows to detect if a compositor is running
• a new --replace command line option is available (similar to other window managers)
• clients now have an unified maximized property additionally to only _horizontal and _vertical
• awful.layout.layouts is now where the client layout array is stored
• the systray elements order can be reversed and spacing can be added
• it is now possible to get the layout of unselected tags (use with caution)
• tags can be swapped, former XMonad users with multiple screens can rejoice
• whole screens can now be swapped
• virtual screens can be created, moved and resized
• paths can be added to Lua's search path via the --search argument
• RandR 1.5 MONITOR support
• access to the X resource management database
• titlebars are now controlled using awful.rules and enabled by default
• awesome-client now supports Lua code as its first argument (instead of reading from stdin)
• preferred client icon size can now be configured (see awesome.set_preferred_icon_size)
• there is now an awesome.startup_errors string with the startup error (if any)
• Initial support for HiDPI monitors / different DPI per screen
• early support for stateful client layouts
• the --version command line option now provides more details and system information

Breaking changes

Awesome 4.0 is a major release. As with all other major release, the API was broken to accommodate for new capabilities. It isn't as different as 3.5 was from 3.4 however. Many changes now cause a deprecation warning instead of breaking hard. However, it is important to take note of these changes in order to avoid new bugs.

Also see the porting tips

There can be off-screen clients unless rc.lua is adapted

To fix from bash/zsh without a config change:

echo 'for _,c in ipairs(client.get()) do require("awful.placement").no_offscreen(c) end' | awesome-client

And add the following to the global rc.lua awful.rule section:

placement = awful.placement.no_overlap+awful.placement.no_offscreen

Also note that this is the new official syntax for placement functions in rules. It is recommended to remove existing ones that are used as callbacks and move them to the placement rule property.

See:

• awful.placement
• awful.placement.no_overlap
• awful.placement.no_offscreen
• awful.rules

Screens are no longer static

Replace rc.lua for s=1, screen.count() do with awful.screen.connect_for_each_screen(function(s) and add a ) after the section end. All global widget tables should be adapted to avoid memory leaks. Static code should not use screen.count() anymore. It should also always use the screen object, as the integer representation is mostly deprecated.

See:

• screen
• screen.connect_for_each_screen
• screen.disconnect_for_each_screen

Screens are now objects

Previously: type(s) == "number", now: type(s) == "screen". Doing screen[1].geometry is now partially deprecated and will probably print a warning in future versions. Any code comparing number and screen objects is now broken. Use screen objects instead of numbers.

See:

• screen

Awesome no longer restarts when a new screen is added

By default, rc.lua now handles screen changes without restarting. It allows to preserve the tag and layout state across changes. Old rc.lua can either be ported to handle this by taking clues from the new rc.lua or restore the old behavior by adding the following at the end:

screen.connect("list", awesome.restart)

See:

• screen
• screen.list

Widgets' :fit() and :draw() methods signature changed and :layout() is mandatory for layouts and containers

All custom widgets need to change their function signature.

The "align" layout default behavior changes

There is a new "strategy" property to define how the space is distributed.

Many APIs are deprecated, fix them before they turn into errors

For example, instead of awful.tag.viewonly(t), the recommended API is now t:view_only(). The whole API has been standardized around this object oriented notation. The warnings will be printed on stderr.

Most widgets' private APIs have changed

You should not use undocumented APIs. Those can change at any time, and this is no exception. The private API of all widgets has been broken.

Spawn changes

• It has been moved into its own module (awful.spawn).
• Some methods have been deprecated. It is not recommended to use blocking methods in Awesome. We made sure to make your life harder if you wish to ignore this warning. Really, using blocking calls in rc.lua has very nasty side effects.

See:

• awful.spawn

Prompt changes

Most arguments have been deprecated, they are now taken from the args argument-by-name table. This was done because the number of optional arguments was getting out of control.

See:

• awful.prompt.run

Timers are no longer part of the C API

Use gears.timer.

Deprecated functions

The previous Awesome API mixed different conventions. There was a major undertaking in 4.0 to make the API coherent and well documented.

Those functions have been renamed or converted to methods:

• awful.client.jumpto
• awful.client.visible
• awful.client.tiled
• awful.client.moveresize
• awful.client.movetotag
• awful.client.toggletag
• awful.client.movetoscreen
• awful.client.mark
• awful.client.unmark
• awful.client.ismarked
• awful.client.togglemarked
• awful.client.floating.set
• awful.client.isfixed
• awful.client.floating.get
• awful.client.floating.toggle
• awful.client.dockable.get
• awful.client.dockable.set
• awful.client.property.get
• awful.client.property.set
• awful.client.get_transient_for_matching
• awful.client.is_transient_for
• awful.mouse.client_under_pointer
• awful.mouse.client.dragtotag.border
• awful.mouse.client.corner
• awful.screen.getdistance_sq
• awful.screen.padding
• awful.tag.move
• awful.tag.swap
• awful.tag.delete
• awful.tag.gettags
• awful.tag.setscreen
• awful.tag.getscreen
• awful.tag.selectedlist
• awful.tag.selected
• awful.tag.setmwfact
• awful.tag.getmwfact
• awful.tag.setlayout
• awful.tag.setvolatile
• awful.tag.getvolatile
• awful.tag.setgap
• awful.tag.getgap
• awful.tag.setmfpol
• awful.tag.getmfpol
• awful.tag.setnmaster
• awful.tag.getnmaster
• awful.tag.seticon
• awful.tag.geticon
• awful.tag.setncol
• awful.tag.getncol
• awful.tag.getidx
• awful.tag.viewonly
• awful.tag.getdata
• awful.tag.getproperty
• awful.tag.setproperty
• awful.tag.withcurrent
• awful.util.get_rectangle_in_direction
• awful.wibox.get_position
• awful.wibox.set_position
• awful.wibox.attach
• awful.wibox.align
• awful.wibox.stretch
• awful.widget.progressbar.set_vertical
• awful.widget.progressbar.set_height
• awful.widget.progressbar.set_width

Note that for 4.0, only a warning will be printed if these functions are used. They will eventually be removed.

Increased use of asynchronous programming

Many operations, such as re-draw, re-layout, geometry changes and various C API calls are now delayed to the end of the event loop iteration to avoid multiple changes per iteration (to not waste CPU time). The downside of this is that it is no longer reliable to assume the result of the previous line of code being applied in the next already.

Startup handling

There is no longer a "startup" argument to the client "manage" signal. If Awesome is currently starting up, then awesome.startup is set to true.

Renamed modules

Just as the functions above, many modules have been moved to follow a naming convention. Using the old name will print a warning and will alias into the new module. Note that theses aliases are temporary and will be removed.

• awful.wibox
• awful.widget.graph
• awful.widget.progressbar
• awful.widget.textclock
• wibox.layout.constraint
• wibox.layout.margin
• wibox.layout.mirror
• wibox.layout.rotate
• wibox.layout.scroll
• wibox.widget.background

The mouse finder module is gone

It has been broken for ages, so we concluded nobody cared.

Menubar changes

menubar.menu_gen.generate is now asynchronous and needs a callback as an argument.

Rules execution order changes

The order in which rules are executed changed. It has been manually curated to avoid known race conditions between the rules execution. For example, adding a titlebar after setting the position resulted in an unwanted shift proportional to the titlebar size.

This is regarded as a breaking changes since it impacts the behavior of existing code, hopefully for the better.

Other

New dependencies

Awesome now depends on Gio and a few other new packages since 3.5. See the README for an extensive list.

A new documentation

Awesome 4.0 now uses LDoc and MarkDown based documentation. We also introduced official guides into our documentation:

• FAQ
• Contributing
• The declarative layout system
• Creating new widget
• Default configuration file documentation
• Change Awesome appearance
• Using Cairo and LGI

The new documentation is vastly superior to the previous one and includes previously missing elements such as:

• a hundred images (from zero)
• more than a hundred new code examples, most of them unit tested (from very, very few)
• all signals (previously partially documented in the wiki)
• all theme variables
• the object properties
• references throughout the documentation
• variable types (previously mostly undocumented)
• many auto-generated pages instead of manually curated (and out of date) ones

The old wiki is closing down

We are moving to a 2 tier solution based on official (and curated) documentation, and a Git based wiki solution. The old wiki has been partially closed down for years due to spam issues and given the API breakage in the past, a non-negligible percentage of the content and tips were no longer working properly.

New website address

The official website is now https://awesomewm.org/ and is now hosted by GitHub. This will allow to retire the former server.

Awesome is now developed on GitHub

This isn't technically part of the release and has been true for years, but as the first major releases since the move, it is a good time to point out that we retired the old infrastructure. This includes the bug tracker, download, wiki, website, repository and continuous integration system.

This move increased our development velocity, number of contributor, visibility count and reduced our infrastructure maintenance cost.

Test-driven development

Awesome went from 0% to 75% unit test coverage. We now have 4 testing systems:

• Linting (checks the code quality and consistency)
• Unit testing
• Documentation examples, documentation images and user interface appearance tests
• Integration tests

We also have a test matrix for:

• Different Lua versions
• Different screen resolutions
• Installation paths
• Dependencies versions

Packaging support

Apart from the existing packages in distributions, Awesome users can now use "make package" to generate .deb or .rpm instead of using make install.