add xmir support

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Although XMir is still under active development I think it would be beneficial 
to have a place to track xmonad port to xmir - provided there are developers 
interested in such an attempt.

Original issue reported on code.google.com by govnotot...@gmail.com on 13 Sep 2013 at 5:04

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Isn't Xmir the X11-compatibility layer for Mir? If so, shouldn't Xmir support 
Xmonad automatically out of the box?

Original comment by bardur.a...@gmail.com on 13 Sep 2013 at 5:38

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pardon, too many "xm" in my head due to prolonged xmonad usage - I mean Mir of 
course.

Original comment by govnotot...@gmail.com on 13 Sep 2013 at 5:59

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Ah, OK, makes sense.

Correct me if I'm mistaken, but haven't the Ubuntu people said explicitly that 
the Mir protocol will never be "stable", i.e. that it'll always be a moving 
target?

Original comment by bardur.a...@gmail.com on 13 Sep 2013 at 6:34

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> the Mir protocol will never be "stable", i.e. that it'll always be a moving 
target?

Mir has a library which is supposed to have a stable API. The protocol itself 
is an "implementation detail". For Mir support, a Haskell FFI binding to libmir 
(or whatever) would have to be done first.

However, I feel like the core algorithms for window management could be split 
out and then any X, Wayland, or Mir port could just use those and then talk 
however is best with the DM and/or apps. Ideally, xmonad-contrib would contain 
non-DM extensions and anything requiring a specific backend could be split off. 
But that's a lot of work which I don't know if there is any interest in doing. 
I do remember someone wanting to write a pure-Haskell Wayland protocol library, 
but I don't know the status of it.

Original comment by MathStuf@gmail.com on 18 Sep 2013 at 3:20

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You might think that, but xmonad's core is right on top of Xlib and would 
require a complete (and incompatible) rewrite to target xcb or wayland/mir.

Original comment by allber...@gmail.com on 18 Sep 2013 at 3:39

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There are work in progress on xcb bindings for haskell:
http://www.haskell.org/haskellwiki/XHB

As far as I recall xcb is the preferred way to talk to xorg according to xorg 
devs so it might be a good idea to port xmonad to xhb anyway.

Original comment by govnotot...@gmail.com on 18 Sep 2013 at 2:29

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Yes, the bindings exist. But "xmonad rewritten over xhb" will not be compatible 
with xmonad: Spencer Janssen investigated this early on and concluded that 
there is no way to make an xcb/xhb-based xmonad compatible with the current one.

Original comment by allber...@gmail.com on 18 Sep 2013 at 2:50

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For the sake of the reference, could you provide link to the detailed write-up 
of those findings - would be interesting to read.

Original comment by govnotot...@gmail.com on 18 Sep 2013 at 3:17

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You'll have to ask sjanssen; he never wrote up details, just a summary, and 
appears to have deleted the ticket completely at some point (I can't find it in 
the issue tracker any more :/ ).

(otoh it's also possible he deleted it so people would quit asking him about 
it...)

Original comment by allber...@gmail.com on 18 Sep 2013 at 3:20

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I think having point of reference in a form of detailed write-up would be more 
effective in dealing with people's questions :)

Original comment by govnotot...@gmail.com on 19 Sep 2013 at 10:22

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Yeah, this topic is rearing its ugly head again, so it might be a good idea to 
make a clear definitive analysis available.

Original comment by mikelie...@gmail.com on 10 May 2014 at 8:01