Riceman

The official rice manager for Rice Linux

Usage

OPERATIONS
    -S, --sync
        Synchronize rices. 
    
    -R, --remove
        Remove rices.
    
    -Q, --query
        Query the rices database.

    -V, --version
        Display the current version.
    
    -h, --help
        Shows this help dialog. Can be paired with other operations.

SYNC OPTIONS
    -y, --refresh
        Download a fresh copy of the rices database.
    
    -u, --upgrade
        Upgrades all rices that are out-of-date.

Goals

The goal of riceman is to make easy the installation of window manager configurations while allowing for multiple configurations of one window manager. In other words, it does not limit the user in the number of configurations per window manager.

Part of riceman's design philosophy is the idea that a user's home directory should not be modified, and the configurations for various software should be all sourced from one location for two reasons. The first is that it makes development easier when all a person needs to do is work in one directory, instead of moving around their file system making changes. The second is that the user can use the installed window manager how they please, without their own configuration being overwritten. As such, riceman functions very much like a system package manager, and is modeled after pacman, the Arch Linux package manager.

As an example, lets say a user wants to install a rice of bspwm which configures bspwm, sxhkd, alacritty, polybar, various themes (icon, GTK, cursor, etc), rofi, and picom. This would be slightly annoying if the user didn't configure those programs already, but if they did they would have to archive the old configs, install the new configs, change their themes, etc. If they have an additional rice alongside the one they just installed on their system, there might be some conflicts with configurations for the same program like alacritty, rofi, or GTK themes. The conclusion is that this system doesn't really work.

Challenges

Some window managers, as you will see below, make it hard, if not impossible in the case of Xmonad, to not modify the home directory. There are a few ways to go at this issue. Riceman could implement a pre-start script in which the config directory would be unlinked and then linked again before the window manager starts. This entire process could also be a built in feature into how riceman generates the .desktop file.

Window Managers

These window managers are split into a few different groups. The main distinction amongst them is whether or not they allow a config file param. I'm really not to sure why they wouldn't all allow some kind of config file/dir specification, but there needs to be a different solution for those that don't.

Supported, tested

• bspwm

Supported, untested

• dwm (supportable, not yet implemented)
• Awesome
• Sway
• River
• i3 (and all of it's variants)
• Fluxbox

Unsupported

• Xmonad
• Openbox
• Qtile

Note: As of right now qtile's docs say that a -c argument can be given for the configuration file, however, when used, it doesn't work

Desktop Environments

DEs are a tricky business. I'm honestly not sure how all the configs are stored for Gnome, KDE, xfce, mate, etc., and although xfce and mate are admittedly minimal, as far as I can see there isn't a good way of handling multiple configuration installations without a hell of problems.

Thank you to...

• the pacman devs