Personal configuration files, symlinked into place. The neovim config is a git submodule (it has its own repo with plugin submodules); dwl, somebar, someblocks, and wlroots are git subtrees; everything else is tracked directly.

Subtrees are regular directories — no special clone steps needed. Set up the required git remotes first:

make remotes

Then sync upstream changes:

make update

To push local changes back to the individual repos:

make push

git clone --recurse-submodules https://github.com/Loupax/dotfiles.git
cd dotfiles

If you already cloned without --recurse-submodules:

git submodule update --init --recursive

Before building, install the required packages.

Arch Linux:

sudo pacman -S xorg-xwayland xcb-util-wm swaync meson ninja libxinerama libxft \
  pipewire-pulse wireplumber noto-fonts-emoji nodejs swayidle wlopm

Ubuntu 24.04:

sudo apt-get install -y libinput-dev libxcb-icccm4-dev libpixman-1-dev libdrm-dev \
  libxkbcommon-dev wayland-protocols libseat-dev hwdata libdisplay-info-dev \
  libliftoff-dev libxcb-composite0-dev libxcb-render0-dev libxcb-xinput-dev \
  libxcb-ewmh-dev libxcb-res0-dev xwayland swaync meson ninja-build libpam0g-dev \
  xdg-desktop-portal xdg-desktop-portal-wlr

After installing, enable the audio session services:

systemctl --user enable --now wireplumber pipewire-pulse

wlroots is vendored as a subtree and built from source, so it does not need to be installed as a system package. On Ubuntu, meson will automatically download and build any dependencies (like wayland and pixman) that are too old in the system packages.

waylock requires Zig to build. Pin to Zig 0.15.x — the upstream master targets Zig 0.16 which is not yet packaged on Arch.

make waylock-install

This builds waylock, installs the binary to /usr/bin/waylock, sets the setuid root bit (required for PAM to read /etc/shadow), and installs /etc/pam.d/waylock.

The PAM config intentionally bypasses pam_faillock — using system-auth would lock your account after 3 wrong attempts, leaving you unable to unlock until the timeout expires.

Lock the screen with Alt+Ctrl+L or run directly:

lock-session        # uses $WAYLOCK_VIDEO if set, falls back to plain waylock

swayidle handles automatic locking — displays turn off after 3 minutes idle, session locks after 5 minutes, and also locks before suspend.

Note: Killing waylock forcefully (e.g. pkill waylock) will crash dwl. This is by design in the ext-session-lock-v1 protocol — the compositor terminates the session to prevent the locker being bypassed. If locked out, switch to a TTY with Ctrl+Alt+F2, log in, then run loginctl unlock-session <id> or reboot cleanly.

Personal configs live at the repo root and must be symlinked before building:

The install make target handles everything:

make install

This builds wlroots to a local prefix (wlroots/install/), symlinks all configs, then builds and installs dwl, somebar, someblocks, st, dmenu, tabbed, and surf.

Note: blocks.h is compiled into the someblocks binary — it is not read at runtime. After editing blocks.h or the block scripts' hide/show logic, re-run make dwl-install to rebuild. Also avoid having a stale ~/.local/bin/someblocks; it will shadow the system-wide binary installed by sudo make install and changes won't take effect.

~/.config/dwl/env is sourced by startdwl before launching the compositor. It is not committed to this repo — use it for machine-specific values:

# ~/.config/dwl/env
export WAYLOCK_VIDEO="$HOME/Videos/lockscreen-1920x1080@25fps.bgra"
export PATH="$HOME/.local/bin:$HOME/bin:$PATH"

The PATH extension is important: DWL's keybinding spawns inherit the compositor's environment, which only has the system PATH. Tools installed to ~/.local/bin (like tmux-sessionizer) won't be found without it.

Screen sharing on Wayland requires xdg-desktop-portal-wlr to handle the ScreenCast portal interface. It starts automatically via D-Bus activation when needed — no manual service management required — but two one-time setup steps are needed.

1. ~/.config/xdg-desktop-portal/portals.conf — tells xdg-desktop-portal which backend handles each interface. Without this, the portal falls back to gtk for everything and never uses wlr for screen capture:

[preferred]
default=gtk
org.freedesktop.impl.portal.ScreenCast=wlr
org.freedesktop.impl.portal.Screenshot=wlr

2. ~/.config/chrome-flags.conf — Chrome must run natively on Wayland (not via XWayland) to use PipeWire for screen capture. Without --ozone-platform=wayland, only tab sharing works (Chrome handles that internally without the portal):

--ozone-platform=wayland
--enable-features=WebRTCPipeWireCapturer

startdwl exports WAYLAND_DISPLAY to the systemd user environment via dbus-update-activation-environment --systemd, which satisfies the ConditionEnvironment=WAYLAND_DISPLAY check on xdg-desktop-portal-wlr.service and allows it to start on demand.

Xwayland is started automatically on :1 when dwl launches. DISPLAY and XAUTHORITY are propagated to D-Bus-activated services via dbus-update-activation-environment, so X11 apps work without any manual setup:

steam
surf

surf is patched with the following:

• Force GTK X11 backend via gdk_set_allowed_backends("x11") — no GDK_BACKEND env var needed
• History patch — visited URLs are appended to ~/.surf/history.txt with ISO 8601 timestamps; use dmenu to search with Ctrl+h (or pipe the file manually)

No additional configuration needed after make install and a session restart.

A project/session picker powered by fzf (terminal) or dmenu (GUI). Lists directories under ~/src/ alongside running tmux sessions, then creates or switches to the selected session.

# Terminal (fzf)
tmux-sessionizer

# GUI (dmenu) — bound to a keybinding in dwl
tmux-sessionizer --gui

The ts bash alias is a shortcut for tmux-sessionizer. The script must be on your PATH — the symlink setup below handles this.

A Wayland screen recorder front-end using wf-recorder. Presents a dmenu menu to choose between region and fullscreen capture, then records to ~/Videos/Screencaps/ as VP9 MKV with audio. A persistent notification appears during recording with a Stop Recording action button — clicking it sends SIGTERM to the specific wf-recorder instance.

Dependencies: wf-recorder (at ~/bin/wf-recorder), slurp, dmenu, libnotify

recorder

Back up any existing configs, then create symlinks:

# From the dotfiles repo root
ln -s "$(pwd)/waybar-work" ~/.config/waybar
ln -s "$(pwd)/sway-work" ~/.config/sway
ln -s "$(pwd)/nvim" ~/.config/nvim
ln -s "$(pwd)/tmux" ~/.config/tmux
ln -s "$(pwd)/tofi" ~/.config/tofi
ln -s "$(pwd)/foot" ~/.config/foot
ln -s "$(pwd)/bashrc" ~/.bashrc
mkdir -p ~/.local/bin
ln -s "$(pwd)/sessionizer/tmux-sessionizer" ~/.local/bin/tmux-sessionizer

Note: The tmux directory only contains tmux.conf. After symlinking, install tpm and plugins:

git clone https://github.com/tmux-plugins/tpm ~/.config/tmux/plugins/tpm
# Then press prefix + I inside tmux to install plugins

To remove a symlink without affecting the repo:

rm ~/.config/waybar  # only removes the symlink, not the directory

git pull
git submodule update --init --recursive
make remotes

git submodule update --remote --merge nvim
git add nvim
git commit -m "Update nvim submodule reference"
git push