Hacking on Qtile

Requirements

Any reasonably recent version of these should work, so you can probably just install them from your package manager.

  • pytest
  • Xephyr
  • xrandr, xterm, xeyes and xclock (x11-apps on ubuntu)

On ubuntu, this can be done with sudo apt-get install python-pytest xserver-xephyr x11-apps.

Building cffi module

Qtile ships with a small in-tree pangocairo binding built using cffi, pangocffi.py, and also binds to xcursor with cffi. The bindings are not built at run time and will have to be generated manually when the code is downloaded or when any changes are made to the cffi library. This can be done by calling:

python libqtile/ffi_build.py

Using Xephyr and the test suite

Qtile has a very extensive test suite, using the Xephyr nested X server. When tests are run, a nested X server with a nested instance of Qtile is fired up, and then tests interact with the Qtile instance through the client API. The fact that we can do this is a great demonstration of just how completely scriptable Qtile is. In fact, Qtile is designed expressly to be scriptable enough to allow unit testing in a nested environment.

The Qtile repo includes a tiny helper script to let you quickly pull up a nested instance of Qtile in Xephyr, using your current configuration. Run it from the top-level of the repository, like this:

./scripts/xephyr

In practice, the development cycle looks something like this:

  1. make minor code change
  2. run appropriate test: pytest tests/test_module.py
  3. GOTO 1, until hackage is complete
  4. run entire test suite: pytest
  5. commit

Second X Session

Some users prefer to test Qtile in a second, completely separate X session: Just switch to a new tty and run startx normally to use the ~/.xinitrc X startup script.

It’s likely though that you want to use a different, customized startup script for testing purposes, for example ~/.config/qtile/xinitrc. You can do so by launching X with:

startx ~/.config/qtile/xinitrc

startx deals with multiple X sessions automatically. If you want to use xinit instead, you need to first copy /etc/X11/xinit/xserverrc to ~/.xserverrc; when launching it, you have to specify a new session number:

xinit ~/.config/qtile/xinitrc -- :1

Examples of custom X startup scripts are available in qtile-examples.

Capturing an xtrace

Occasionally, a bug will be low level enough to require an xtrace of Qtile’s conversations with the X server. To capture one of these, create an xinitrc or similar file with:

exec xtrace qtile >> ~/qtile.log

This will put the xtrace output in Qtile’s logfile as well. You can then demonstrate the bug, and paste the contents of this file into the bug report.

Coding style

While not all of our code follows PEP8, we do try to adhere to it where possible. All new code should be PEP8 compliant.

The make lint command will run a linter with our configuration over libqtile to ensure your patch complies with reasonable formatting constraints. We also request that git commit messages follow the standard format.

Deprecation policy

When a widget API is changed, you should deprecate the change using libqtile.widget.base.deprecated to warn users, in addition to adding it to the appropriate place in the changelog. We will typically remove deprecated APIs one tag after they are deprecated.

Testing

Of course, your patches should also pass the unit tests as well (i.e. make check). These will be run by travis-ci on every pull request so you can see whether or not your contribution passes.

Resources

Here are a number of resources that may come in handy: