Configuring Sway with Scheme

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Today we’re going to take a look at the Sway compositor for Wayland. I’ve been playing with it for the last day and I like it so far!

I’d like to try creating a Guile Scheme library that will make it possible to configure Sway using Scheme code, either as a .scm file or at the REPL.

Sway is a Wayland compositor built on wlroots.

• Pin workspaces to specific displays
• Tabbed full-screen-ish app experience

• No xrandr or arandr, configure displays
• No .desktop or .xsession needed, just run sway
• You can pin specific workspaces to displays!

• Sometimes hard to make applications play nice with Wayland

(define-module (sway)
  #:use-module (json)
  #:use-module (ice-9 popen)
  #:use-module (ice-9 match)
  #:use-module (ice-9 rdelim))

(define (execute-swaymsg command)
  (read-delimited "" (open-input-pipe (string-append "swaymsg " command))))

(define (get-outputs)
  (json->scm (open-input-pipe (string-append "swaymsg -t get_outputs"))))

(define (get-inputs)
  (json->scm (open-input-pipe (string-append "swaymsg -t get_inputs"))))

(define (get-tree)
  (json->scm (open-input-pipe (string-append "swaymsg -t get_tree"))))

(define (set-layout! layout)
  (system (string-append "swaymsg layout " (symbol->string layout))))

(define (switch-workspace name)
  (system (string-append "swaymsg workspace " name)))

(define (set-workspace-output! workspace-name output-name)
  (system (string-append "swaymsg workspace " workspace-name " output " output-name)))

(define (move-workspace-to-output! workspace-name output-name)
  (system (string-append "swaymsg workspace " workspace-name))
  (system (string-append "swaymsg move workspace to output " output-name)))

(define (toggle-fullscreen!)
  (system "swaymsg fullscreen toggle"))

(define* (set-output! name #:key resolution background scale)
  (define (call-output . args)
    (system (string-join (append (list "swaymsg output" name) args) " ")))

  (when scale (call-output "scale" (number->string scale)))
  (when resolution (call-output "resolution" resolution))
  (when background
      (match background
        ((path . mode)
         (call-output "background" path mode)))))

(define* (set-border! #:key (style 'normal) (thickness 2))
  (system (string-append "swaymsg border "
                         (symbol->string style)
                         " "
                         (number->string thickness))))

;; Example Usage

(set-output! "HDMI-A-1"
             #:scale 2
             #:background '("~/.dotfiles/backgrounds/mountains-1412683.jpg" . "fill"))

(set-workspace-output! "dev" "HDMI-A-1")
(move-workspace-to-output! "comm" "HDMI-A-1")
(move-workspace-to-output! "browser" "HDMI-A-1")

(set-border! #:style 'pixel #:thickness 1)