default
System for choosing default applications, programs, and utilities
TODO: generate executables for fast exec
Use Cases
Like update-alternatives, but local to user and more flexible. Requires a database of applications and their defaults at "${XDG_CONFIG_HOME:-$HOME/.config}/chooses/defaults"
- Launch with file
Control which applications are selected when opening a file. This works irrespective of the desktop environment. xdg-open falls flat because it doesn't work with directories. Furthermore, different applications can be configured to work in a different context (X, Terminal emulator, Linux console).
Since these are just shell scripts, arbitrary arguments should be supported, like --column and --row for example, if using a text editor.
- Launch without file
The current 'Browser' or 'Image Viewer' can be launched. Again, this is intended to work across distributions and user interfaces.
See more info in details.md
Roadmap
- 'get' subcommand
- use choose when using fuzzer / filter (dmenu vs rofi -dmenu, etc.)
- sourcing pre-exec does does output on --verbose flag (or another)
- GUI selector (select via GUI if there are multiple options), optional
- doctor command to ensure that git config attributes, ranger attributes, etc. are all valid and point to choose properly
- before launch dialog, have UI where can download the application with help of (woof?)
Application / Category Attributions
- cli vs tui vs gui
- use on conditions (only X11, wayland, etc. have fallback (ordering))
- launching vs shell (interactive, non-interactive), DE (.desktop, etc.), tty vs ptty etc.
- an editor vs viewer
- ones meant to generalize across application vs choosing a specific thing (without last common denominator cli argument flags, etc. compatability)
- printing to stdout, running a blocking application, running a non-blocking application, exec'ing into a new process, and running a daemon
- execution helpers (if it requires a terminal, must wrap it in terminal invocation)
Installation
sh
cargo install exa