xdotool windowactivate does not focus window

[rayvermey]

Hi

hope you can help me.
If i do : xdotool search --name "Slack" windowactivate , the tag where Slack is does not get focus.
xdotool search --name "Slack" does give a PID though

What patches should i apply to make xdotool work?

Thank you.

Ray

[bakkeby]

The https://dwm.suckless.org/patches/focusonnetactive/ patch is what you would be looking for. It makes it so that the view changes to the tag the client is on when a _NET_ACTIVE_WINDOW client message is received.

By default (without it) the client is only marked as urgent and the tag colours are inverted.

In dwm-flexipatch this can be enabled with the FOCUSONNETACTIVE_PATCH macro.

[rayvermey]

Back home..
What i wonder is: why does "exec instantwm" works, but exec "dwm" give errors on startx...
dwm just compiles right out of the box.
So why would dwm not start???
Do you have any ideas maybe?

[rayvermey]

hmmmm i have the dwm-flexipatch working now!
I have patches.h and patches.def.h
patches.h had not the FOCUSONNETACTIVE macro set to 1
patches.def.h did.
When i changed patches.h , compiled, then xdotool worked!
Still strange that fresh dwm does not start but hey, dwm-flexipatch is much better! :-)
Thanks for your help!

Ray

[bakkeby]

The config.def.h file as the name suggests is the default configuration file in dwm (and most suckless tools for that matter).

When you (first) compile dwm config.def.h is copied to config.h if the latter does not exist. config.h is then a local / personal configuration file that you can change as you want. This is often a source of confusion for new users as patches will apply to the default configuration and not your personal configuration file which again leads to compilation errors.

The patches.def.h file follows the same pattern in that the default patches.def.h file is copied to patches.h if it does not already exist.

[rayvermey]

OK so if i understand this correct: you leave the config.def.h alone, edit config.h for personal changes, then if there is a patch or an update, i must diff the config.def.h with my config.h and adjust my config.h accordingly to the patches or update?

[bakkeby]

Yes that is correct. Diffuse and meld are useful tools for this.

It is perfectly possible to hack it so that it always reads from config.def.h instead of config.h of course. It adds a risk of conflicts when it comes to updates, but this should for the most part be avoidable if you update using git pull --rebase.