[Xmonad] [HUMOR] xmonad useless without programming skills ?

[Spencer Janssen]

On Friday 14 September 2007 05:56:34 Xavier Maillard wrote:
> Hi,
>
> Each time I try to update xmonad (from darcs), my Config.hs is broken. This
> is, for me, the major drawback of xmonad. I do not understand any a line of
> Haskell and thus I am lost after each upgrade.
>
> Although I love xmonad, it is useless since I can't benefit of any upgrade
> without boring you about my new Config.hs's problems...
>
> Am I alone in this situation or not ? How haskell rookies like do ?
>
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Config.hs has been called our Haskell trojan horse -- perhaps it is time to
learn Haskell? ;)

I think there are some steps you can take to alleviate your problem.  First,
you can upgrade less often.  I think running the stable 0.3 release is a good
idea -- it is robust and has nearly all of the features of the current
development version.  If you stick to stable releases you shouldn't have to
update your Config.hs more than once a month.

Next, I think judicious use of a nice diff/merge tool will help.  I'd use
'vimdiff xmonad-0.2/Config.hs xmonad-0.3/Config.hs', where the first is an old
version with all your customizations, and the second is a pristine Config for
the new version.  Gradually port your customizations from left to right, and
compile frequently to catch mistakes early.

Finally, if you're having trouble with a contrib module, check the usage info
at the top of that module.  Every module should have a working Config example
(please report a bug if it does not!).


Cheers,
Spencer Janssen