Feature request: Allow for tracking window identity (IDs) in custom layouts on Sonoma

[joliss]

It would be fantastic if Amethyst exposed some way to track window identity across calls to getFrameAssignments in custom layouts, as the ids seem to have become unstable in Sonoma.

I just wanted to post this as a follow-up feature request to the problem I encountered in https://github.com/ianyh/Amethyst/issues/1570#issuecomment-1783530190. I hope you don't mind me opening a new issue for this – I was just trying to figure out whether or not there's any hope that this might be fixable in Amethyst, before I spend an afternoon working around this in my custom layout code. If you think it's not doable or worthwhile, I completely understand if you want to simply close this issue.

For what it's worth, the window IDs don't seem to be completely random, but rather change and swap semi-randomly. This makes me wonder if we're seeing the result of some non-deterministic operation on the set of window IDs, like getting the keys from a hash table in unspecified order.

P.S. I saw the "Donating" section in the README, but if you ever want to charge for a license, even if it's just an optional fee (e.g. by putting Amethyst binaries in the app store), I'd be more than happy to pay! I bought a Pro Display XDR from Apple, and Amethyst helps me get value out of all the screen real estate, so even something like $99 would be a no-brainer compared to the hardware cost. Just thought I'd mention cause I'm feeling a bit freeloadery just asking for features without offering a patch.

[joliss]

I just looked into working around this, by reconstructing the state from the window positions, but now I don't think that's a feasible workaround. That's because the updateState functions in each command get a focusedWindowID and return a state, like so:

    commands: {
      command1: {
        description: "Move window to left pane",
        updateState: (state, focusedWindowID) => {
          state.runCommand(focusedWindowID, LEFT); // my code
          return state;
        }
      },

But because the window IDs are no longer stable, I cannot return a state that the next call to getFrameAssignments can meaningfully act on.

[ianyh]

Figured it out. Unstable JSON key ordering!

[ianyh]

Also, I very much appreciate the kind words. I've considered various open source funding mechanisms, but when it comes down to it I think it would be a source of stress beyond my normal software job stress, and I would prefer to do this because I care about it when I have time.