dwmblocks

This is a status bar designed to work with dwm.
dwmasyncblocks works asynchronously, thus no more frustration for blocks "freezing" the bar.

Requirments

In order to build dwmblocks the Xlib header files are needed (for Arch, the libx11 package).

Installation

Use make to compile and install dwmblocks (make sure you edit config.h to match your setup beforehand):

sudo make clean install

Description

With dwmblocks, you can divide the status bar into multiple blocks, thus not having to rerun every single script everytime the bar updates, giving you control on how often each block updates. In addition, signals can be used to update any block on demand. It is done by sending dwmblocks the following signal:

pkill -RTMIN+SIG_NO dwmblocks

where SIG_NO is the signal number of the corresponding block. SIGUSR1 can be used to update all blocks together. Moreover dwmblocksctl is included, where instead of trying to remember the signal number of the block, you can use its name.

dwmasyncblocks, comes in handy in cases where a block takes several seconds to execute. In this case, instead of every block waiting for one to finish, all blocks can update independandly thus no "freezing" and no disappearing of blocks.

Blocks are clickable, and that can be utilized by using the "BLOCK_BUTTON" environment variable in the scripts, to be used with a dwm patched with statuscmd.

Usage

To set dwmasyncblocks as the statusbar, run in the background on startup. Add the following to the startup script of your window manager (or .xinitrc if you use that).

dwmblocks &

Configuration

The blocks as well as some options can be defined in the config.h file:

#define CLICKABLE_BLOCKS 1     // Allows the blocks to be clickable.
#define LEADING_DELIMITER 0    // Places a delimiter at the front of the bar.
#define DELIMITER ""           // The string to be used as the delimiter.

const Block blocks[] = {
	/*Command                  Update Interval   Update Signal */
    ...
	{ "/path/to/script",       10,                10 },
    ...
};

The update interval is in seconds. If the interval is set to 0, that means the block wont be updated automaticly. If the signal is set to 0, then it renders the block unclickable

Everytime the config.h file is editted, dwmblocks must be (re)compiled.

Uninstallation

Use make to uninstall the binaries and manuals.

sudo make uninstall

Credits

When i finished the project with some minor things missing, i happened to find UtkarshVerma's dwmblocks-async dwmblocks, where it is basicly the same as mine.