I've spent a couple of weeks updating the WindowMaker sources to include every bug-fix I could find. All together, there are about 70 fixes -more than I can easily test alone. So, I'd like for any wmaker fans who want to, to email me and I'll send along a copy of the sources.

I don't want to upload them just yet, as I've submitted the changes to the official (inactive) wmaker maintainer. I've had no response yet, but am still hoping he will react.

Actually, I've created two new branches of wmaker. The first includes only bug-fixes and is meant for people like Pat V. or others who dissapprove of third-party patches. The second branch builds on that and adds about 25 new features. Most of them are well-tested features which ahve been around for years and have been used by ALT Linux, fedora, gentoo and others. Many of them came from ALT Linux, via Alexey Voinov, the author of the WDM display manager and former wmaker contributor.

But, I've also rolled in most of the new features from Carlos Mafra's wmaker-crm branch -but only after the original code was ironed out through revisions, fixes, etc. I have avoided the massive coding-style changes from the wmaker-crm branch(one patch is 228,000+ lines!), as well as the changes which break wmaker for use on anything but Linux-2.6. Still, the new features from his branch are getting lots of testing, so they should be pretty stable by now. A couple of them are pretty exciting, like left/right_half and 'maximumize' maximization styles...

So any takers for testing? If so, email me at: 'amigo AT ibiblio.org' and
I'll send you a copy of either version of the sources. If you are a src2pkg user, tell me so and I'll send you the whole build kit with src2pkg script and extras. Otherwise, build (and package) it with whatever method you'd normally use.

Thanky, Gilbert

Edit: Also, if anyone here runs any of the BSD flavors or any other *nix, I need for people to test if these sources will still compile on BSD or other *nix.

I am not a taker but i don't know if you noticed that Windowmaker has active development again.
I don't know if that will lead to a future version, but there is at least some activity.
You can find the mercurial repository here: http://hg.windowmaker.info/wmaker/

edit: the mailing lists also seem somewhat busy: http://www.windowmaker.info/lists.php

Hi,

gnashly, I have included a link for the request in 'Slackware Request for Testing' at 'Slackware-Links'. More than just Slackware® links!

Yes, I know. As I said, I've submitted these changes upstream. The problem is that the current maintainer is totally unresponsive -neither doing, nor allowing to do. Around a year ago, I had about twenty patches accpeted upstream -the only ones accepted at all until a few eeks ago when the maintainer pulled in a couple of very minor changes -actaully just reversing some previous changes to the docs which containe references to windowmaker.org/windowmaker.info.
The devel mailing list is quite active, but we've al given up on getting any action from the maintainer -he never gets around to reviewing or committing patches and doesn't answer e-mails either. I'm quite sure he never *runs* wmaker himself, so he can be indifferent about it. But, there are many paasionate users and contributors who frequent the mailing list, so we've all just been doing things for ourselves and sharing the work using the official mailing list.
I smell a fork coming... We've been doing the heavy lifting by testing and fixing, but our 'dear leader' can't find the time to commit changes or answer emails.

How's things going in WindowMaker land Gilbert? I just popped by windowmaker.info and the official mercurial repos. Seems as dead as ever.

Yep, I contacted our 'beloved leader' and sent him all the patch sets and never heard a word from him. I'm still debating about what to do with the sources. As you may know, Carlos Mafra maintins a 'private' branch and activity surrounding it dominated the wmaker development mailing list. After applying all the fixes I could find, I also merged in most of the new features which Carlos and his contributors have come up with. But, his branch has done some things I didn't agree with -mostly that his sources now only support linux-2.6 -no BSD or other *nixes. So, I've been careful to not make those changes. I have also left out some really major changes in coding style -one of his patches was 225,000 lines.
Anyway, I've considered announcing my branch of the sources on the mailing list so that especially BSD'ers have an alternative. It's a pity that the work is fractured -some already feel that way just knowing about Carlos' branch. So I hesitate. The other alternative is to create a full fork from my work. This really seems to be a better way forward, as I want to make wmaker more conformant with freedesktop standards.
I have privately contacted a couple of the users on the mailing list who run wmaker under BSD flavors, and they have tested my branch successfully. I am still merging fixes from Carlos & Co. as they come in, so as to not fall behind. But I don't really have a lot of time to spend working on wmaker -I'm too busy running it and doing other things. I'm convinced that the official mainatiner doesn't even run it -his behaviour indicates that he is doing everything possible to make wmaker die completely...

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Thanks for the update. I can appreciate your reluctance to announce a fork, it's a serious commitment to become the maintainer of a project such as this. It's a shame the current maintainer didn't give that any consideration before taking on the role.

I've taken to running 'cwm' on my OpenBSD box, but as that system has an nvidia card and has to use the 'nv' driver it's not really much of a X11 box anyway, mostly it's just for xterms and an xclock.

I'm not sure what I'll end up using on my Linux desktop. Finding that I actually liked the more recent versions of KDE4 has unsettled me a little bit, but I still have a fondness for, and am still drawn to WindowMaker.

Get a second monitor setup and run both! I have KDE4 on my primary monitor and WindowMaker (gnashley's second branch) running on my secondary monitor which I launch with 'wmaker -display :0.1'.