Hi Dan and Eduard,
Thanks for the link to the package list. Seems reasonable, I looked around for the i3 config file you indend to ship but coudn't find it. The RPM/Fedora packaging files are unfamiliar to me. (I am sort of self-taught on how to roll Debian packages but am by no means an expert.) Do you intend to ship an i3 config file other than what's provided by the upstream project? If not, then I am guessing it's expected that the new user experience involves directly editing the i3 config file?
> Or are you planning to provide this via an external daemon/tool instead of patching i3?
The i3 config file partial implementation is just a shell script that combines files from specific directories into a single file and passes it to i3 upon launch. There are no changes required to i3. Doing this opens the door for a number of use cases but the primary one we need this for now is to decouple the i3 config file from the package specification. For example, you use `feh` to provide the background. If `feh` is referenced in your i3 config file then you would not permit users to uninstall the program as it would break thier system. With a modular, "conf.d" style i3 layout, a meta package that depends on both feh and it's associated i3 config partial could be cleanly added removed as needed by users.
> That sounds great, please keep us updated!
Will do! I plan on experimenting w/ using `fpm` to generate RPMs from my Debian packages once other tasks are done that allow me to reduce the total dependency closure to something more reasonable for cross-distro porting.
Kind regards,
ken
> I work on a desktop environment project called Regolith[1] which
> currently supports Ubuntu-based systems. We have an open issue[2] for
> porting our desktop environment to Fedora and a user noted the existence of
> this project and suggested maybe we could work together. I clicked around
> a bit in your project pages but did not find much in the way of concrete
> details. Things that I am interested in, and may be topics for
> discussion:
We took Regolith Linux as well as Manjaro i3 community edition as part of our inspiration, thanks for that great project.
> 1. How do you intend to handle the "desktop environment" stuff (Set screen
> resolution, sound output, user locale, etc.)?
> 2. How do you intend to create your package dependency graph?
>
> From the 2 or so years I've worked on this project, I think a big design
> challenge is how to allow for users to modify and extend their desktop in
> such a way that updates over time do not break user configurations but
> still allow the freedom to make changes under the hood. I am working on a
> design for decomposition of an i3 config file into conf.d style
> partials[3]. I'd also be curious as to what insights you may have
> here.
>
> Currently I am working on breaking the package topology of Regolith to
> allow for easier porting to package formats such as RPM and host operating
> systems such as Debian, and potentially also entirely different desktop
> systems such as Wayland/Sway.
Dan answered most of your questions, if you have anything else to share and/or to ask, feel free to reach us here.
Best regards,
--
Eduard Lucena
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GNU/Linux User #589060
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Fedora Marketing Representative