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Hi. I'm the maintainer of i3-gaps and also a maintainer for i3. The story of this merge is not only several years long, but a true success story in OSS in my e

Hi. I'm the maintainer of i3-gaps and also a maintainer for i3. The story of this merge is not only several years long, but a true success story in OSS in my eyes. I took on i3-gaps by taking an existing patch and rebasing it to the latest i3 HEAD. From there it became popular and I took on the maintainership, eventually contributing to i3 itself and finally becoming a maintainer there as well. Whilst originally gaps were considered an "anti feature" for i3, years ago we already decided that we'd accept adding gaps into i3. Clearly the fork was popular, and as someone else pointed out here as well, the Wayland "port" of i3, sway, added gaps from the beginning on with great success. However, the original gaps patch was focused on being small and easy to maintain. It caused a few issues and had some drawbacks. We made it a condition that porting gaps into i3 would have to resolve these issues. Alas, this could've meant a lot of work that no one took on for the years to follow. Recently, however, the maintainers of i3 got together (a chance to meet arose randomly). During that meeting we decided that it'd be better to just merge the fork and improve it later. And as it happened, Michael, the author and main maintainer of i3, did all that work during the port as well. What resulted is the end of almost a decade of i3-gaps, and a much better implementation thereof. I'm incredibly happy to see this happen after all this time, and a big shoutout to Michael here for all that work. Edit: Hadn't realized Michael was commenting here already. I guess leaving the background and story from my side of things doesn't hurt regardless.

digitalsin 4y ago
Thank you and the team for all the hard work! i3/gaps has always been my favorite twm.
- ews 4y ago
  Adding to that, I didn't fully move to wayland until sway was mature enough for my day to day work. i3 (I think I found the project through a twit from somebody at Google) is completely burned into my mind and my current workflow and I just could not living without it.
secure 4y ago
Thanks for providing the background here, and thanks for maintaining i3-gaps over all the years! :) I’m also happy we could complete this merge now!
- the-grump 4y ago
  Thank you both for creating and maintaining the snazziest and most reliable window manager in this galaxy.
BaculumMeumEst 4y ago
thank you so much for all your hard work!
barelysapient 4y ago
Thank you! I use and love i3 gaps and can’t wait to update to i3 mainline in the future.
vasergen 4y ago
Being a user of i3-gaps for a couple of years. Just want to say thank you for all the work!
gigatexal 4y ago
Much much much thanks to you all for working and contributing to i3. It is the primary reason I use Linux. I love it. I couldn’t do my work without it. Thank you!
codethief 4y ago
Thanks to both of you for maintaining i3(-gaps) all these years! I don't remember exactly when I started using i3 but it's been at least 9 or 10 years, if not more. I didn't make the jump to i3-gaps until a couple years later but, boy, am I glad I did! For me, i3 is one of those few pieces of software that is pretty much optimal – it is rock solid and stable, I wouldn't know how to improve it any further and I also couldn't imagine living without it. By now, my i3 keybindings are hard-wired into my brain and I despise having to work with any other window manager or desktop environment! Besides, for the few rare cases where you do forget to lock your screen, a tiling wm with custom key bindings is a great way to prevent your colleagues from messing with your machine, in particular: announcing free cake using your Slack account. :-) Story time: When I was still doing research in cosmology back in 2014/2015, one day there was this new guy in our research group and, as it so happens, we ended up sharing an office. A couple weeks in, we were both at our desks and he looked over my shoulder and said: "Ahh, I see you're using i3!" "Yup, been using it for quite a while and I absolutely love it!" "Do you know who the maintainer is?", he replied, with a big smile on his face. Turns out, Michael was his brother! So that's how I learned to remember the name "Stapelberg". :-) [@secure: Please say Hi to him for me!] A few years after that episode, one night I told a good friend of mine about i3 & i3-gaps and we both had a look at their Github repositories. My friend had recently started working at this IT consulting firm, and he went: "Wait a second, Airblader / Ingo Bürk? That's my colleague!" Not long after that discovery, I started working for a startup in Munich and it just so happened that the startup had also hired that same consulting firm for their dev team. Aaaand Ingo was their consultant! I'm honored to say I learned a ton from Ingo during that time and I still look back fondly to pair-programming with him (i.e. mostly him telling me what to do or patiently explaining things to me). If I've ever seen one of those infamous unicorn rockstar 10x developers, it's definitely him! Four years later, I ended up at that consulting firm, too, in no small part thanks to Ingo convincing me to join them. All this is to say: The world is small. And: You guys have changed my life! Thank you! :)
- secure 4y ago
  It truly is a small world! I’ll say hi to him, thanks for sharing :D
- 4y ago
westurner 4y ago
What do you think about getting alt-tab support in there? Here to say this: https://github.com/westurner/dotfiles/blob/develop/scripts/i3t.py https://github.com/westurner/dotfiles/blob/develop/scripts/i...
- __MatrixMan__ 4y ago
  You want to use i3 to collapse focus management into a single temporal dimension? I'll die defending your right to do so, but dear god your taste is atrocious. It's like you finally got out of prison and decided to decorate your bedroom window with iron bars.
  - gorgoiler 4y ago
    In every window manager that supports it, alt tab does two things. Alt tab with a long hold on alt lets you select another window, albeit from a linear list as you describe, by cycling through with tab and shift-tab. Quickly typing alt-tab now cycles between the window you came from and the window you just selected. That’s the super useful value of the feature. Is there an i3 command to (a) leap to another window from a selection and (b) leap back and forth between the window you came from and the window you just chose?
    - iamevn 4y ago
      For (a) I've been using rofi. I bound a key to open its window switcher which gives me a searchable list of all open windows. There are quite a few other options: https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/I3#Jump_to_open_window https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/I3#Jump_to_open_window For (b) I don't know what the best option is but I see some people posting their scripts in this thread: https://github.com/i3/i3/issues/838 https://github.com/i3/i3/issues/838 I think I would bind some keys to mark and then focus by mark if I wanted to do this instead of having a toggle.
    - counttheforks 4y ago
      > Is there an i3 command to (a) leap to another window from a selection and (b) leap back and forth between the window you came from and the window you just chose? Not for windows as far as I know, but for workspaces, yes: https://i3wm.org/docs/userguide.html#back_and_forth https://i3wm.org/docs/userguide.html#back_and_forth https://i3wm.org/docs/userguide.html#workspace_auto_back_and_forth https://i3wm.org/docs/userguide.html#workspace_auto_back_and...
toomanydoubts 4y ago
I never thought I would live to see this day! Thank you so much for the work
h0p3 4y ago
Thank you.
rhaway84773 4y ago
Thanks to you and all the other i3 maintainers. i3 is a life changing experience for me. It completely changed the way I looked at computers themselves (having been raised on a steady diet of Windows and OSX, i3 was the first time I became aware of the fact that there could be other desktop UI paradigms, which changed how I look at nearly everything else as well). On a more practical level, I’ve never been more efficient as I have been i3. So a deep thank you to all the folks responsible for building such great software and making it accessible to so many so easily.
tiffanyh 4y ago
> Recently, however, the maintainers of i3 got together (a chance to meet arose randomly). During that meeting we decided that it'd be better to just merge the fork and improve it later. Off topic: Sounds like an in-person meeting, as opposed to only being remote, facilitated a roadmap change that hadn’t happened without it.
- Airblader 4y ago
  I think the in-person meeting made this a bit easier, but we had been talking about it prior to that, so I think it would've happened either way.
__MatrixMan__ 4y ago
Ah i3. With the sole exception of vi, no other software is so fully embedded in my muscle memory. Thank you, I think.
- chimeracoder 4y ago
  > Ah i3. With the sole exception of vi, no other software is so fully embedded in my muscle memory. Ironic, given that the default i3 configuration uses jkl; instead of hjkl for direction.
  - __MatrixMan__ 4y ago
    Oh that's a good point. I forgot about that. I aligned them immediately and then forgot that my values aren't the defaults.
michaelmrose 4y ago
Thanks for all the work maintaining and improving i3 I enjoy using it every day and really appreciate it.
iforgotpassword 4y ago
Cool to hear some background stories to i3 from you and the other replies here. I didn't think about it in some time since i3 just works, but yeah thanks for maintaining this great project. Also surprised Michael is still maintaining/using it after becoming a Go evangelist. ;;-)

digitalsin 4y ago

Thank you and the team for all the hard work! i3/gaps has always been my favorite twm.

ews 4y ago
Adding to that, I didn't fully move to wayland until sway was mature enough for my day to day work. i3 (I think I found the project through a twit from somebody at Google) is completely burned into my mind and my current workflow and I just could not living without it.

secure 4y ago

Thanks for providing the background here, and thanks for maintaining i3-gaps over all the years! :) I’m also happy we could complete this merge now!

the-grump 4y ago
Thank you both for creating and maintaining the snazziest and most reliable window manager in this galaxy.

BaculumMeumEst 4y ago

thank you so much for all your hard work!

barelysapient 4y ago

Thank you! I use and love i3 gaps and can’t wait to update to i3 mainline in the future.

vasergen 4y ago

Being a user of i3-gaps for a couple of years. Just want to say thank you for all the work!

gigatexal 4y ago

Much much much thanks to you all for working and contributing to i3. It is the primary reason I use Linux. I love it. I couldn’t do my work without it. Thank you!

codethief 4y ago

Thanks to both of you for maintaining i3(-gaps) all these years! I don't remember exactly when I started using i3 but it's been at least 9 or 10 years, if not more. I didn't make the jump to i3-gaps until a couple years later but, boy, am I glad I did! For me, i3 is one of those few pieces of software that is pretty much optimal – it is rock solid and stable, I wouldn't know how to improve it any further and I also couldn't imagine living without it. By now, my i3 keybindings are hard-wired into my brain and I despise having to work with any other window manager or desktop environment! Besides, for the few rare cases where you do forget to lock your screen, a tiling wm with custom key bindings is a great way to prevent your colleagues from messing with your machine, in particular: announcing free cake using your Slack account. :-) Story time: When I was still doing research in cosmology back in 2014/2015, one day there was this new guy in our research group and, as it so happens, we ended up sharing an office. A couple weeks in, we were both at our desks and he looked over my shoulder and said: "Ahh, I see you're using i3!" "Yup, been using it for quite a while and I absolutely love it!" "Do you know who the maintainer is?", he replied, with a big smile on his face. Turns out, Michael was his brother! So that's how I learned to remember the name "Stapelberg". :-) [@secure: Please say Hi to him for me!] A few years after that episode, one night I told a good friend of mine about i3 & i3-gaps and we both had a look at their Github repositories. My friend had recently started working at this IT consulting firm, and he went: "Wait a second, Airblader / Ingo Bürk? That's my colleague!" Not long after that discovery, I started working for a startup in Munich and it just so happened that the startup had also hired that same consulting firm for their dev team. Aaaand Ingo was their consultant! I'm honored to say I learned a ton from Ingo during that time and I still look back fondly to pair-programming with him (i.e. mostly him telling me what to do or patiently explaining things to me). If I've ever seen one of those infamous unicorn rockstar 10x developers, it's definitely him! Four years later, I ended up at that consulting firm, too, in no small part thanks to Ingo convincing me to join them. All this is to say: The world is small. And: You guys have changed my life! Thank you! :)

secure 4y ago
It truly is a small world! I’ll say hi to him, thanks for sharing :D
4y ago

westurner 4y ago

What do you think about getting alt-tab support in there? Here to say this: https://github.com/westurner/dotfiles/blob/develop/scripts/i3t.py https://github.com/westurner/dotfiles/blob/develop/scripts/i...

__MatrixMan__ 4y ago
You want to use i3 to collapse focus management into a single temporal dimension? I'll die defending your right to do so, but dear god your taste is atrocious. It's like you finally got out of prison and decided to decorate your bedroom window with iron bars.
- gorgoiler 4y ago
  In every window manager that supports it, alt tab does two things. Alt tab with a long hold on alt lets you select another window, albeit from a linear list as you describe, by cycling through with tab and shift-tab. Quickly typing alt-tab now cycles between the window you came from and the window you just selected. That’s the super useful value of the feature. Is there an i3 command to (a) leap to another window from a selection and (b) leap back and forth between the window you came from and the window you just chose?
  - iamevn 4y ago
    For (a) I've been using rofi. I bound a key to open its window switcher which gives me a searchable list of all open windows. There are quite a few other options: https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/I3#Jump_to_open_window https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/I3#Jump_to_open_window For (b) I don't know what the best option is but I see some people posting their scripts in this thread: https://github.com/i3/i3/issues/838 https://github.com/i3/i3/issues/838 I think I would bind some keys to mark and then focus by mark if I wanted to do this instead of having a toggle.
  - counttheforks 4y ago
    > Is there an i3 command to (a) leap to another window from a selection and (b) leap back and forth between the window you came from and the window you just chose? Not for windows as far as I know, but for workspaces, yes: https://i3wm.org/docs/userguide.html#back_and_forth https://i3wm.org/docs/userguide.html#back_and_forth https://i3wm.org/docs/userguide.html#workspace_auto_back_and_forth https://i3wm.org/docs/userguide.html#workspace_auto_back_and...

toomanydoubts 4y ago

I never thought I would live to see this day! Thank you so much for the work

h0p3 4y ago

Thank you.

rhaway84773 4y ago

Thanks to you and all the other i3 maintainers. i3 is a life changing experience for me. It completely changed the way I looked at computers themselves (having been raised on a steady diet of Windows and OSX, i3 was the first time I became aware of the fact that there could be other desktop UI paradigms, which changed how I look at nearly everything else as well). On a more practical level, I’ve never been more efficient as I have been i3. So a deep thank you to all the folks responsible for building such great software and making it accessible to so many so easily.

tiffanyh 4y ago

> Recently, however, the maintainers of i3 got together (a chance to meet arose randomly). During that meeting we decided that it'd be better to just merge the fork and improve it later. Off topic: Sounds like an in-person meeting, as opposed to only being remote, facilitated a roadmap change that hadn’t happened without it.

Airblader 4y ago
I think the in-person meeting made this a bit easier, but we had been talking about it prior to that, so I think it would've happened either way.

__MatrixMan__ 4y ago

Ah i3. With the sole exception of vi, no other software is so fully embedded in my muscle memory. Thank you, I think.

chimeracoder 4y ago
> Ah i3. With the sole exception of vi, no other software is so fully embedded in my muscle memory. Ironic, given that the default i3 configuration uses jkl; instead of hjkl for direction.
- __MatrixMan__ 4y ago
  Oh that's a good point. I forgot about that. I aligned them immediately and then forgot that my values aren't the defaults.

michaelmrose 4y ago

Thanks for all the work maintaining and improving i3 I enjoy using it every day and really appreciate it.

iforgotpassword 4y ago

Cool to hear some background stories to i3 from you and the other replies here. I didn't think about it in some time since i3 just works, but yeah thanks for maintaining this great project. Also surprised Michael is still maintaining/using it after becoming a Go evangelist. ;;-)