Given a few little problems with fvwm 2.7 on a recently migrated laptop (ubuntu 22.4->24.4) I am considering trying a migration to fvwm3.
To start with I scanned my .fvwr2rc in conjunction with the man pages on Fvwm3 Manual Pages. (I haven’t installed fvwm3 yet).
I made a list of a few little changes for the basic things, but I have a number of widgets associated to shells scripts which issue FvwmCommand “SendToModule xxx SendString”.
Now I see that the new man page for FvwmCommand is rather sketchy wrt the old one, and I cannot find any reference to Module FvwmCommandS which on (2.6/2.7) I call in my .fvwm2rc.
Is some man page missing on line? Did things change?
Any suggestion for the migration ?
Note also that FvwmCommand is just a wrapper around talking to FvwmMFL, so no more FvwmCommandS needed.
Furthermore, if you compile FvwmPrompt, you can use that directly in the same way as FvwmCommand.
The debian package won’t have FvwmPrompt, so just use FvwmCommand as you always have. The once change is just load FvwmMFL instead of FvwmCommandS from your StartFunction.
I could not resist :-) trying fvwm3. So I report my steps:
(1) made a backup copy of .fvwm2rc
(2) renamed it config
(3) commented out the invocation of FvwmCommandS and of the four FvwmScript widgets
(4) installed from synaptic fvwm3 (1.0.6a)
(5) verified that “fvwm” points to fvwm3 via the /etc/alternatives method
(6) logged out, and verified that the display manager offers a choice of Fvwm and Fvwm3 (apparently this bypasses the /etc/alternative mechanism)
(7) selecting Fvwm runs fvwm2 (with the simplified config)
(8) selecting Fvwm3 starts fvwm3. Almost everything in the simplified config works as previously and/or as expected, namely:
under fvwm3 FvwmAuto runs and autoraises windows (under 2.7.0 it did not run), which is good
under fvwm3 (as expected) the (Hilight)Fore|BackColor are not honoured. Since I had already ColorSets (copied from some standard config but never edited), I suppose they rule and my back/fore styles are no longer overriding them. I will play with Colorsets (I assume 1 and 2). This is ok.
So far I’d say the migration was exceptionally smooth !
Now my plans are to start working with the FvwmScripts. Before I proceed (tomorrow), I have a question related to the inspection of the fvwm3 installed files.
A) FvwmCommand points via /etc/alternatives to a Fvwm3Command (a python file, no longer a binary executable),
which I assume is fine
B) in /usr/libexec/fvw3/1.0.6a (the MODULEPATH) I see both a FvwmCommandS and a FvwmMFL, so I am puzzled about which one to use (the former looks a wrapper … is it a temporary thing going to be discontinued ?)
I would look at the default-config, the manual page, or https://www.fvwm.org/Wiki/Config/Colorsets/ for a suggestion as to what to use different numbers for. You can use only two, colorset 1 and 2, or you can use more for different aspects you want control over. The wiki and default-config use a suggestion for 1-10 as a starting point.
I would just load FvwmMFL, then it won’t matter, but FvwmCommandS is still a wrapper in 1.1.1, though it may be removed at some point, there is no current plan.
It might also be worth running fvwm-convert-2.6 over your configuration file, to see what else can be updated.
It works like a charm !
I replaced (instead of enabling) FvwmCommandS with FvwmMFL and tried my FvwmScripts one by one, and they do run as expected.
I had already moved my fore/back colours into Colorsets 1 & 2. For some historical reason my .fvwm2rc had some “standard” 8 colorsets, plus a number of custom ones (for the pager and other things). Can’t remember why I still used the fore/back styles to override them.
To finisch I ran the convert script and it did suggest just a few replacement of !Xxx wrt NoXxx, and a few blank-after-commas in style listings. Apparently it was already v3-ready :-)
So I consider this closed.
I was excessively worried of the v2 to v3 migration, and instead it was extremely smooth, and a fun to do.
Thanks for the design leading to it, the help on the forum, and fvwm as a whole !
One last thing, the version 1.0.6a is a bit dated in fvwm3 standards, but works just fine. There have been lots of improvements in 1.1.0 and 1.1.1. If you want a more up to date version on a debian based system, you can follow the instructions here to build the current main branch, https://github.com/somiaj/fvwm3-debian/, or grab the 1.1.1 source package from debian and build it in your version of ubuntu.
Note that, when you take @somiaj’s advice to upgrade, this will become even more important as I’ve made changes to that script.
When fvwm3-1.1.2 is released, I’ll be mentioning this in the release notes.
But if things are working well enough for now as-is, that’s good to hear.
Kindly,
Thomas