dbc - yet another status bar for dwm written in C

This program shows these values by default:

• hostname (optional)
• used memory
• current network card status
• alsa volume
• power suppy status
• current X keymap
• and current date...

...and does it on multple threads.

Sample output:

dbc v2.0

New version includes 3 delimeter styles to choose from and a minimal mode, useful for low-res displays. It also supports better configuration and it's much more optimised - it only updates the necessary modules when running idle; the hungrier ones get updated only at manual refreshes.

Installation:

Dependencies:

Arch Linux

# sudo pacman -S libx11 alsa-lib ttf-font-awesome

Ubuntu (partially ported)

# sudo apt install libx11-dev libxkbfile-dev libasound2-dev fonts-font-awesome

Create configuration files when running for the first time with:

sudo make

Recompile everything after changing config.h for changes to take place with:

sudo make clean install

Uninstallation:

sudo make clean uninstall

Usage

Usage is extremely simple it consists of two commands,

• dbc starts the statusbar (you can put it in xinitrc, make a systemd service, etc.)
• refbar refreshes the statusbar (use that with your hotkey daemon)

Command line options:

Execute single iteration (useful for timing)

dbc -s

No error checking (for testing purpouses more or less)

dbc -n

Output status string only once to STDOUT (useful for terminal-only SSH and maybe combining this program with shell scripts)

dbc -o

It's possible to combine options like

dbc -sno

Configuration

Installer generates config.h file. Edit the quite self-explanatory values in that file, recompile and run as usual.

Combining dbc with shell scripts

It's perfectly possible to do something like this:

echo "[ $( free -h | head -2 | tail -1 | awk '{print $3}') ] " | tr -d '\n' && dbc -o

Or

xsetroot -name " $HOSTNAME | $(dbc -o)"

TODO:

• optimise current features
• add more modules and upgrade current ones
  • redo network module to read default route by itself
• add configurable modules
• manpage entry
• test on other distros than Arch
• fix a bug with connecting usb wifi cards

Contribution and hacking

This program was made and tested on the ThinkPad T480 and X230, both running Arch Linux. I have no guarantees that it will work on other laptops / distros even though it should. I tried to make it run on ubuntu too but some font related problems have arised. If you are interested in testing or have a problem, feel free to contact me.

I also tried numerous times to implement PulseAudio module instead of ALSA, losing all hope eventually. Maybe I will try again some time in the future (if anyone knows how to do it efficiently please contact me at anej.lekse@gmail.com).