ANN: New tool xfce-config-helper

[andre at andreldm.com]

Hi Felipe,
This is a very interesting project, a couple of months ago while migrating to new laptop I wrote a simple script (cannot find it anymore) to dump all xfconf's channels/properties into commands, for example:xfconf-query -c <channel> -p '<property>' -n -t <type> -s '<value>'

My goal was to later write a writer/reader to handle a format similar to i3's config file, but I guess your goal is very close to mine.

Regarding the file format, YAML is acceptable, though from experience it's really easy to mess it up. I would use the rc format already used by Xfce, for example:

[thunar]
hidden-bookmarks=['computer:///', 'recent:///']
last-view='ThunarDetailsView'
last-window-width=170

[xfce4-panel]
panels=[0]
panels/panel-0/autohide-behavior=0
panels/panel-0/length=100

IMO that's more friendly and doesn't require a YAML parser.

Regarding Ruby, I believe most users don't have it installed, using shell or even python would be more appropriate.

All in all this a nice addition to Xfce, what do you think about pushing this upstream? If you're interested let's continue this discussion at https://gitlab.xfce.org/xfce/xfconf/-/issues/29 :)

Cheers,
Andre Miranda

Feb 10, 2022, 08:00 by xfce-request at xfce.org:

> Message: 1
> Date: Wed, 9 Feb 2022 06:34:22 -0600
> From: Felipe Contreras <felipe.contreras at gmail.com>
> To: xfce at xfce.org
> Subject: ANN: New tool xfce-config-helper
> Message-ID:
>  <CAMP44s2dQdUBtc6de+Uo5PZ5BpkCh+Bw1o+bPhqv9OMAJSdYUA at mail.gmail.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="UTF-8"
>
> Hello,
>
> Over the years I've tried many ways to store my Xfce configuration in
> a simple way and what I've found is the best is using YAML files.
>
> I developed a tool to read this YAML configuration and update xfconf on the fly.
>
> The format is simple:
>
>  shortcuts:
>  commands:
>  "<Super>Return": xfce4-terminal
>  wm:
>  show_desktop: "<Super>d"
>  settings:
>  xfwm4:
>  "/general/easy_click": Super
>  panels:
>  - position: p=10;x=0;y=0
>  plugins:
>  - - whiskermenu
>  - - tasklist
>  - - pager
>
> And to load it you just do `xfconf-load config.yml`.
>
> For more information and installation instructions check the GitHub repo [1].
>
> If you are using Arch Linux, I've also created an AUR package:
> xfce-config-helper [2].
>
> Enjoy!
>
> [1] https://github.com/felipec/xfce-config-helper
> [2] https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/xfce-config-helper
>
> -- 
> Felipe Contreras
>

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