dwm Source Build^

Clone the Origin Repository^

Start with the origin remote repository. This can be created on GitHub or GitLab as managed solution, or if you need to self-manage everything, you can set up a server in the cloud or on your network to host a bare Git repository.

Once you have the repository ready, clone it onto your local system:

$ git clone git@gitlab.com:kennethpjdyer/dyer-dwm ~/.local/opt/dwm/main

This command clones the remote Git repository (in this case, my private repository for hosting my fork of dwm) from the host to the ~/.local/opt/dwm/main directory.

Configure the Upstream Repository^

The repository is currently empty. In order to pull down the code from Suckless.org, you need to configure a separate remote to tell Git where to look for the upstream code.

First, add the upstream remote:

$ cd ~/.local/opt/dwm/main
$ git remote add upstream https://git.suckless.org/dwm

To test that you have the correct URL, use the fetch command to connect to the remote repository and pull down the commit and branch information you need to use the upstream:

$ git fetch upstream

If the fetch pulls down data from upstream, it indicates that the remote repository was correctly configured.

Merge Upstream Release^

In order to bring the remote code down from Suckless.org to your local repository, you need to pull a specific branch.

The remote dwm repository uses the master branch to track on-going work on the tool. If you plan to run dwm as a bleeding edge build, this is the branch to pull down.

However, it is generally advisable that you track a specific release. Suckless.org tags release commits and pushes them to specific branches on the upstream repository.

To list the available tags, use the tag command:

$ git tags
...
5.9
6.0
6.1
6.2
6.3
6.4
6.5

This shows the available tags. It’s generally advisable to pull down the latest release, but you can work from any that you feel comfortable using.

To pull down a specific release, use the pull command:

$ git pull --no-rebase upstream 6.5

The --no-rebase option ensures that Git merges the changes from the upstream branch rather than rebases.

Push the Changes to Origin^

Once you have the base code from the upstream remote merged into your local repository, you should also push the changes up to your personal remote repository.

$ git push origin HEAD

The HEAD branch is a special designation to push your current branch to a remote branch of the same name.

As best practice, you should make a habit of always pushing your commits up to the origin HEAD branch. This ensures that whatever you are doing exists in at least two places, which is much more secure than trusting your hard drive with all your important work to last forever.

Build Binaries^

Dwm is written to the C99 standard of the C programming language. Make calls the cc command, which on my system invokes GCC.

$ make
cc -c -std=c99 -pedantic -Wall -Wno-deprecated-declarations
-Os -I/usr/X11R6/include -I/usr/include/freetype2
-D_DEFAULT_SOURCE -D_BSD_SOURCE -D_XOPEN_SOURCE=700L
-DVERSION=\"6.5\" -DXINERAMA drw.c
cc -c -std=c99 -pedantic -Wall -Wno-deprecated-declarations
-Os -I/usr/X11R6/include -I/usr/include/freetype2
-D_DEFAULT_SOURCE -D_BSD_SOURCE -D_XOPEN_SOURCE=700L
-DVERSION=\"6.5\" -DXINERAMA dwm.c
cc -c -std=c99 -pedantic -Wall -Wno-deprecated-declarations
-Os -I/usr/X11R6/include -I/usr/include/freetype2
-D_DEFAULT_SOURCE -D_BSD_SOURCE -D_XOPEN_SOURCE=700L
-DVERSION=\"6.5\" -DXINERAMA util.c
cc -o dwm drw.o dwm.o util.o -L/usr/X11R6/lib -lX11
-lXinerama -lfontconfig -lXft

As you can see, it runs the compiler several times to build out the dwm binary that runs the terminal emulator.

A benefit of Suckless.org’s focus on simplicity is that their software tends to compile very fast. So fast that it’s pretty trivial to make a quick change to the C code and then recompile and run the updated binary—which is something you’ll likely be doing a lot as you hack on the code to get it to do what you need.

Install^

With the binary successfully built, it’s time to install them on your system.

Installation on Linux requires elevated privileges to copy the binary to /usr/local/bin. You can modify the prefix to install the binary somewhere in your user’s /home directory path, such as ~/.local/bin—but, you shouldn’t. It’s best practice to move executable binaries some place where users or rogue processes would have difficulty in making changes. So, use sudo to run the install process.

$ sudo make install
[sudo] password for user:
mkdir -p /usr/local/bin
cp -f dwm /usr/local/bin
chmod 755 /usr/local/bin/dwm
mkdir -p /usr/local/share/man/man1
sed "s/VERSION/6.5/g" < dwm.1 > /usr/local/share/man/man1/dwm.1
chmod 644 /usr/local/share/man/man1/dwm.1

This command install the dwm binary in the /usr/local/bin directory with the appropriate permissions.

Clean Repository^

The next step after installing dwm is to clean the repository. This can also be done with Make using the clean target to run the appropriate rm operations.

$ make clean
rm -f dwm drw.o dwm.o util.o dwm-6.5.tar.gz

Check Location^

This simplest check is to see if the dwm binaries are available in your PATH. This can be done with the whereis command:

$ whereis dwm
dwm: /usr/local/bin/dwm

Check Version^

An even simpler check to verify the installation of dwm is to check its version. Many Linux applications are configured with a version sub-command or a --version option to retrieve this information. Dwm uses the simpler -v option.

$ dwm -v
dwm-6.5

Installation should overwrite any existing binaries installed on your system. If the version number shown here does not match the one for the tag you compiled, something went wrong with the install and you should double-check whereis and other areas to investigate the reason.