EXWM GDM

Launch EXWM from GDM.

Motivation

Cobbling together a desktop environment doesn’t appeal to me. Reusing GNOME lets me focus on what does. GDM launches a rootless Xorg, sources .profile, unlocks the keyring, etc.

Getting started

To get started, run:

git clone https://github.com/Koekelas/exwm-gdm.git

Then, to install, provided /usr and /etc are correct (they are on Ubuntu, Arch Linux and likely other GNU/Linux distributions), run from this directory:

make install prefix=/usr sysconfdir=/etc

Finally, in Emacs, evaluate (package-install 'exwm) and add (exwm-initialize) to the Emacs initialization file. Now, when in GDM, after choosing a user, click the gear and choose EXWM.

How to

Change how Emacs is launched

Create $XDG_CONFIG_DIR/exwm/exwmrc (likely ~/.config/exwm/exwmrc), a shell script, for example:

# Set SSH agent (GNOME Keyring Daemon)
eval $(gnome-keyring-daemon -s)
export SSH_AUTH_SOCK

# Launch Emacs
exec emacs

Enable EXWM only when Emacs is launched from GDM

Check if $XDG_CURRENT_DESKTOP equals EXWM, for example:

(when (string= (getenv "XDG_CURRENT_DESKTOP") "EXWM")
  (exwm-enable))