ABar is an interface for generating dynamic "blocks"-style status strings.
When using minimalistic status bars, you'll generally define a number of modules and then stick them together somehow. For instance, your bar might look a bit like this:
```
VOLUME | BATTERY | CURRENT_TIME <<< ```
This can come with a performance hit, however, as normally you'd have to update everything all at once. Every time you want to refresh the battery, you'd also have to refresh the volume, etc. This might seem fine, but if you ever want to rely upon something slow (such as an HTTP request) your entire bar will come to a crawl. ABar solves this problem by giving each module its own unique update cycle.
ABar takes some minor inspiration from the tools you might see over at suckless.org in that it's designed to be hackable. There's no configuration file, and instead the idea is that you modify your bar by directly toying with the source code. This results in the potential for an incredibly fast, powerful status bar that feels truly your own.
dwmblocks is a project with a similar goal. It's fantastic, but ABar differs in a few ways:
ABar is available as both a library and a binary. This means that you can either hack on the source code in this repository, or create an entirely new project using the interface available on crates.io. My personal configuration is an example of how you might use abar as a library.
It's in Rust. While Rust is definitely harder to work with than C, you also
have access to the cargo package manager. Cargo is fantastic, and can allow
a newcomer to do some very advanced things in raw rust (skipping shell
scripts entirely). For many people, this alone can make abar the fastest
status bar available.
In general, dwmblocks focuses more on integration with shell scripts, while abar focuses more on the customisability offered by direct access to the source code.
Running cargo install --path abar from the source directory will install the
binary, while automatically pulling any dependencies you've defined in
abar/Cargo.toml
Library source files can be found in ./src/, while binary source files are in
./abar/src/.
The main "configuration" happens in ./abar/src/config.rs, which contains some
examples to guide you through the basics.
More specific info can be found in the documentation.