xmonad-log-applet for GNOME and Xfce

xmonad-log-applet is a handy panel applet/plugin for GNOME (and now Xfce) users who use Xmonad as an alternative window manager. The applet will show the visible workspace(s), active window's title or anything you send its way from your xmonad.hs.

I recently took over xmonad-log-applet maintainership from Adam Wick, and today I'm happy to announce the release of version 2.0.0.

Changes since the previous release:

• Migrated the GNOME 2 applet from deprecated libbonobo API to the new D-Bus based API.

• GNOME 3 panel support (in fallback mode).

• Xfce 4 panel support.

• Revamped the build system.

• Dropped GConf dependency which was used to specify the applet width; instead fill all available space (like the window list applet) and ellipsise when necessary.

• Simplified background transparency handling.

• Fixed install locations.

• Updated sample xmonad.hs.

To install get and unpack the tarball or clone the repo, then run:

% ./configure --with-panel=gnome2
% make
% sudo make install

Substitute gnome2 with gnome3 or xfce4 if that's what you use. If you cloned the git repo, use ./autogen.sh instead of ./configure. After restarting the panel you should be able to add the applet.

Use the provided sample xmonad.hs file to bind it to Xmonad. It depends on the DBus package, which currently doesn't compile with GHC 7.x, but it's easy to work around:

% cabal update
% cabal unpack DBus
% cd DBus-0.4
% $EDITOR DBus/Internal.hsc

Replace import Control.Exception with import Control.OldException, then:

% cabal configure
% cabal build
% cabal install

After this, your xmonad.hs should compile.

EDIT: With GHC 7.4, you also need to edit DBus/Message.hsc and prepend Foreign. to unsafePerformIO.

Happy Xmonading!