j4-dmenu-desktop is a replacement for i3-dmenu-desktop. It's purpose is to find .desktop files and offer you a menu to start an application using dmenu. Since r2.7 j4-dmenu-desktop doesn't require i3wm anymore and should work just fine on about any desktop environment.
You can also execute shell commands using it.
- Compiler with basic C++11 support (GCC 4.77 or later required, Clang works, too)
- CMake
Building is the usual cmake/make thingy:
cmake .
make
sudo make install
The package is provided by the AUR. You can install it with an AUR helper of your choice: j4-dmenu-desktop-git or manually by invoking the following commands as a regular user. (to build packages from the AUR, the base-devel package group is assumed to be installed)
wget https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/j4/j4-dmenu-desktop-git/j4-dmenu-desktop-git.tar.gz
tar xf j4-dmenu-desktop-git.tar.gz
cd j4-dmenu-desktop-git
makepkg -si
The package is provided by the gentoo-el overlay. You can install it with the following commands as root. (you need to have layman installed and configured)
layman -a gentoo-el
echo "=x11-misc/j4-dmenu-desktop-9999 **" >> /etc/portage/package.accept_keywords
emerge x11-misc/j4-dmenu-desktop
Usage:
j4-dmenu-desktop [--dmenu="dmenu -i"] [--term="i3-sensible-terminal"]
j4-dmenu-desktop --help
Options:
--dmenu=<command>
Determines the command used to invoke dmenu
Executed with your shell ($SHELL) or /bin/sh
--use-xdg-de
Enables reading $XDG_CURRENT_DESKTOP to determine the desktop environment
--display-binary
Display binary name after each entry (off by default)
--no-generic
Do not include the generic name of desktop entries
--term=<command>
Sets the terminal emulator used to start terminal apps
--usage-log=<file>
Must point to a read-writeable file (will create if not exists).
In this mode entries are sorted by usage frequency.
--help
Display this help message
Add the -i option to the dmenu command
You can put this in a script file and use it instead of calling j4dd directly:
j4-dmenu-desktop --dmenu="(cat ; (stest -flx $(echo $PATH | tr : ' ') | sort -u)) | dmenu"
Exchanging the cat and (stest ... sort -u) parts will swap the two parts (j4dd's output and the list of binaries).
% time i3-dmenu-desktop --dmenu="cat"
[{"success":true}]
i3-dmenu-desktop --dmenu="cat" 0.37s user 0.02s system 96% cpu 0.404 total
% time ./j4-dmenu-desktop --dmenu=cat
./j4-dmenu-desktop --dmenu=cat 0.01s user 0.01s system 107% cpu 0.015 total
More than 25 times faster :)