i3gator

🐊

Yes, it's yet another i3 layout manager. But this one doesn't even pretend to do any declarative management of your i3 layouts, it's actually just a helper for writing soft of scripts what should be done to create a layout.

Layout example:

workspaces:
    w:
        - cwd: ~/go/src/
        - terminal-new
        - terminal-write: make run
        - terminal-enter

        - i3: split vertical

        - terminal-new
        - terminal-write: make debug

        - terminal-new
        - terminal-write: make nginx
        - terminal-enter

        - terminal-wait

        - i3: move left

# vim: ft=yaml

i3gator doesn't know much about these terminal-* identifiers, it only knows how to work with workspace, cwd and i3 things.

So, it requires a list of definition of these programs, your ~/.config/i3gator/i3gator.conf might look like:

programs:
    terminal-new:
        exec:
          - "terminal"

    terminal-write:
        exec:
          - "tmux"
          - "send-keys"
          - "-t"
          - "<terminal-new>"
          - "-l"
          - "<args>"

    terminal-enter:
        exec:
          - "tmux"
          - "send-keys"
          - "-t"
          - "<terminal-new>"
          - "Enter"

    terminal-wait:
        exec:
            - "xdotool"
            - "search"
            - "--sync"
            - "--name"
            - "<terminal-new>"

terminal binary in this example is expected to return a name of tmux session which will be used afterwards for sending keys to tmux session. Every stdout is written into a hashmap and then can be used by its identifier like <terminal-new>.

There are only few things support out of the box so far:

cwd changes current working directory;
i3 calls i3-msg and passes args.

Everything else is up to you.

i3gator doesn't give a heck about what you already have on the workspace, it will just run the commands. Worse is better.

Installation

go get github.com/kovetskiy/i3gator

Usage

Put your main config in ~/.config/i3gator/i3gator.conf and then push your layouts to directory ~/.config/i3gator/layouts/ with suffix .conf.

Call the gator like i3gator job and it will apply layout from ~/.config/i3gator/layouts/job.conf.

Questions

Didn't get something from the doc? It's okay, I wrote it in a few minutes because I don't expect anyone except myself and close friends to use this software, but if you still decided to give it a try and something is not working, I'll be glad to assist you and will finally update the doc.