i3-workspace-manager

When working on a lot of projects at one managing workspaces and windows can become cumbersome. i3-workspace-manager is a way to automatically open a text editor and a terminal from a project list and switch between them. It takes a command to list your projects, and a list of command to run on your displays to open it.

The following commands are available :

Command	Description
-open	open a new project from project list
-select	switch to an already opened project
-prev / -next	quick switch to previous / next project
-close	close project windows and switch to previous project

Project list

Listing all git repositories in ~/dev:

-list-cmd 'cd ~/dev && find . -type d -name .git | sed "s/.git$//" | sed "s/^\.\///"'

Workspaces

Workspace command are given $PROJECT_NAME env var as provided by the -list-cmd

For example open a terminal on display 1:

-wk 'DVI-D-0:terminator --working-directory ~/dev/$PROJECT_NAME'

And an editor on display 2 :

-wk 'DVI-I-1:code ~/dev/$PROJECT_NAME'

Setup command

-setup-cmd will be called before opening a project, as with -wk, $PROJECT_NAME is given as env var. This allows to perform some action such as cloning the repository if it isn't already.

i3 config example

In this example the commands are moved to script file for easy change without reloading i3

# Common command for all actions
set $i3wks ~/dev/go/bin/i3-workspace-manager -wk 'DVI-D-0:~/bin/i3wks-cmd' -wk 'DVI-I-1:~/bin/i3wks-code' -setup-cmd '~/bin/i3wks-setup' -list-cmd '~/bin/i3wks-list'

# Select action
bindsym $mod+n exec --no-startup-id $i3wks -select

# Open action
bindsym $mod+Shift+n exec --no-startup-id $i3wks -open

# Prev action
bindsym $mod+b exec --no-startup-id $i3wks -prev

# Next action
bindsym $mod+Shift+b exec --no-startup-id $i3wks -next

# Close action
bindsym $mod+Shift+v exec --no-startup-id $i3wks -close

Dependencies

• Rofi for displaying the project switcher.