I’ve learned something really kooky and important about the Linux culture.
Take this Ubuntu forum thread about a configuring a bit of software called Conky.
Conky is something utterly, microcosmically configureable. Like a lot of open source software is. Like Vim or KDE or Linux itself.
And it’s not that have to “reprogram” the software itself, at least not most of the time. It never has to be that microscopic. But you can hack it’s engine in meaninful ways to make it better.
And there’s no “Preferences…” config dialog for this kind of shit, yo. Putting it in an interface would be insane.
And yea, it’s also a little insane to want to do that with software. Configure it like that. And it’s probably downright sick to downright enjoy doing it – but…
Imagine what we would have been able to do if all software was built like that?
It should be. Anything less is no longer a good idea for these important machines.
Linux is rightly not seen as innovating. There’s no new hotness there – most of the time. A lot of its software really are rip-offs of “bigger” applications.
But big things happen in Linux, they just happen in very little – microscopic – ways.
(Damn man, I really drank the Linux cool-aid, didn’t I?)
I drank the Haskell cool-aid so….
xmonad is “configured” by actually linking the xmonad library against a custom main provided by the user. Resulting in a custom executable that isn’t xmonad but a xmonad derived window manager that has been derived according to how the user wants it.
Cabal’s setup programs also work like this. The simplest is:
import Distribution.Simple
main = defaultMain
Which literally means: Import the Cabal *library* and create a build system based off the main provided by that library.
In Yi, the haskell text editor, the method is much the same: The equivalent of the rc file is actually a definition of the user custom version of the software derived from the provided system.