fzf support?

[hyiltiz]

Would be great if one could do fuzzy search. Maybe you can detect and perform fuzzy search if fzf is present in the system. The implementation should be as easy as adding two pipes, around fzf.

[enkore]

It should be possible to integrate fzf and dmenu without changing this application. Maybe fzf even supports a "pipe-through" mode? (maybe something like j4-d-d --dmenu="fzf --pipe-into-and-read-input-from=dmenu")

[hyiltiz]

Yeah, I think something like that. FZF is a standard UNIX pipe.

On Fri, Nov 6, 2015, 19:01 enkore notifications@github.com wrote:

It should be possible to integrate fzf and dmenu without changing this application. Maybe fzf even supports a "pipe-through" mode? (maybe something like j4-d-d --dmenu="fzf --pipe-into-and-read-input-from=dmenu")

— Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub https://github.com/enkore/j4-dmenu-desktop/issues/48#issuecomment-154581493 .

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[b0ch3nski]

Please excuse me this little necrobump, but I'm struggling with this approach:

j4-dmenu-desktop --dmenu="fzf --prompt='Run: ' --height 100% --reverse --cycle"

It works, but the selected process is not being started in background and therefore it blocks the launcher terminal from exiting. The same approach works 100% fine using i3-dmenu-desktop and the terminal is gone after application is selected:

i3-dmenu-desktop --dmenu="fzf --prompt='Run: ' --height 100% --reverse --cycle"

... but it's noticeably (painfully) slower :(

@enkore, is there a reason those two behave differently? Can I get somehow j4dd to behave like i3dd?

[enkore]

IIRC i3dd uses some proprietary i3 stuff (i3-sendmsg or so) to have i3 start the process on its behalf, j4dd stopped doing that years ago to be independent of i3.

Try

j4-dmenu-desktop --dmenu="fzf --prompt='Run: ' --height 100% --reverse --cycle" &

[b0ch3nski]

Adding simple ampersand at the end of command results in:

Failed to read /dev/tty

and nothing shows up.

I believe that i3dd uses i3-msg exec <cmd>.

Would it be possible to just return the selection from j4dd instead of executing it (something like --no-exec)? Then I could use it this way:

selection=$(j4-dmenu-desktop --no-exec --dmenu="fzf --prompt='Run: ' --height 100% --reverse --cycle")
[[ -z $selection ]] || i3-msg exec $selection

[ritobanrc]

Is this going to be resolved? I would also like to use fzf as an app launcher, but i3dd + fzf is too slow for my liking. For me, j4dd just doesn't detach from the terminal. Would this be possible to implement?

[b0ch3nski]

@ritobanrc see my comment above - someone would have to implement a switch to disable automatic selection execution :pray:

[enkore]

That seems reasonable to me. It should then just output the command line on stdout?

[mmartin]

My solution is to override the SHELL variable.

Create a file which will be used as the fake shell:

#!/bin/bash
function run_dmenu {
    while test $# -gt 0; do
        [[ $1 == fzf ]] && return 0
        shift
    done
    return 1
}
if run_dmenu $*; then
    SHELL=/bin/bash exec /bin/bash "$@"
else
    shift
    [[ $1 == -c ]] && shift
    exec echo "$@"
fi

Then use j4dd like this:

cmd=$(SHELL=/path/to/fake_shell j4-dmenu-desktop --dmenu=fzf | sed -n 2p)
[[ -n "$cmd" ]] && i3-msg exec "$cmd"

[Eisfunke]

That seems reasonable to me. It should then just output the command line on stdout?

That'd be great!

[feschber]

so I got this to work with two scripts like this: (on sway)

----------$HOME/scripts/dmenu-fzf.sh--------------------

!/bin/bash

swaymsg '[title="dmenu-fzf"]' kill || alacritty -t dmenu-fzf -e $HOME/scripts/j4-dmenu-fzf.sh ------------$HOME/scripts/j4-dmenu-fzf.sh----------------------

!/bin/bash

swaymsg '[title="dmenu-fzf"]' kill || alacritty -t dmenu-fzf -e $HOME/scripts/j4-dmenu-fzf.sh

its not perfect though, I'm not sure if the Path part of .desktop files is being respected like this...

would be much nicer, if the launched program would just be disowned by j4-dmenu automatically, so the terminal could close afterwards

[feschber]

Nevermind I just found out about the wrapper part:

!/bin/bash

swaymsg '[title="dmenu-fzf"]' kill || alacritty -t dmenu-fzf -e j4-dmenu-desktop --wrapper='swaymsg exec' --dmenu=fzf

[b0ch3nski]

FYI: The code for --no-exec is already in develop branch :champagne:

[feschber]

I don't quite understand the difference to --wrapper.

Right now you would use alacritty -t dmenu-fzf -e j4-dmenu-desktop --wrapper='swaymsg exec' --dmenu=fzf

with --no-exec you would do alacritty -t dmenu-fzf -e swaymsg exec $(j4-dmenu-desktop --dmenu=fzf --no-exec)

Am I missing something? This would still involve swaymsg / i3msg or any other program to spawn the program.

What I'd have thought would be a good solution is a --bg / --disown flag, that spawns the program in the background and then terminates j4-dmenu-desktop.

That way you could just do alacritty -t dmenu-fzf -e j4-dmenu-desktop --dmenu=fzf --bg

[enkore]

That would be pretty simple, just fork+setsid before executing.

if(background)
switch(fork()) {
case 0:
   setsid();
   break;
case -1:
   perror("fork");
   return 1;
default:
  return 0;
}

exec(...);

[b0ch3nski]

Please excuse me this little necrobump, but I'm struggling with this approach:

j4-dmenu-desktop --dmenu="fzf --prompt='Run: ' --height 100% --reverse --cycle"

Fast forward from 2017 to 2024 :smile: If someone finds this over Google, here is how I ended up solving this:

j4-dmenu-desktop --no-exec --dmenu='fzf --prompt="Run: "' | xargs -I{} swaymsg "exec {}"

--no-exec was available since Sep 2020: https://github.com/enkore/j4-dmenu-desktop/commit/24a5b9ece24ac60ad27b5b01b6cd565c798244c2

@enkore I think that this issue can be closed, can't it?

[meator]

@b0ch3nski I haven't investigated this issue in depth, but I believe that --no-exec hackery with xargs -I{} swaymsg "exec {}" should no longer be necessary. I have implemented i3 IPC support in j4-dmenu-desktop. You should be able to execute things through Sway with:

j4-dmenu-desktop --dmenu='fzf --prompt="Run: "' --i3-ipc

or

j4-dmenu-desktop --dmenu='fzf --prompt="Run: "' -I

Support for i3 IPC was introduced in r3.0, but it contains some bugs which prevent it from being used on Sway. Full support for Sway is not in any released version of j4-dmenu-desktop yet, but you could try out the r3.1 release candidate released yesterday.

[markstos]

The next version of Fuzzel will include --match-mode=fzf which will include fzf-inspired filtering.