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mstrohm

Member

Registered: 2020-02-09

Posts: 37  

I'm attempting to fork the SLiM desktop manager

Hello

I'm currently attempting to fork the SLiM desktop manager. The fork is called "Schlimm" (Simple configurable human login management module) and its source code is available at codeberg.org:

https://codeberg.org/ncc1988/schlimm

The initial motivation for the fork was that SLiM or its themes don't work well on HiDPI displays and I wanted to fix that. Since the original project is unmaintained with no commit since 2013 [1], I started to look at the source code to figure out how HiDPI support may be added. That in turn lead to code refactorisation that is still in progress. The code gets rewritten in a unified coding style (PSR-1 and PSR-2, as far as applicable) and standalone functions are moved into classes. Another part of the refactorisation is translating the C++03 code to modern C++ (C++20, as far as I know it).

During refactorisation, I started thinking that an unmaintained project like SLiM could in the future be removed from GNU/Linux repositories because external dependencies may be replaced: X11 -> Wayland, PAM -> elogind/logind, etc. So it might be necessary to prepare for these new libraries without removing support for established libraries which is why I think about adding interfaces between Schlimm and external dependencies so that they can be replaced more easily.

Are there features you miss in SLiM? Do you have ideas for features that shall be included in the fork?
I'm currently collecting ideas that could improve Schlimm, so feel free to tell me about them :-)

Regards
Moritz

[1]: https://github.com/iwamatsu/slim