Ilia - A Desktop Executor

Ilia is a tool for users to invoke actions such as launching apps, viewing notifications, and finding windows. It provides a modal interface consisting of a filter box, and a list of matching items. There are a set pages that can be selected from by specifying the desired page via a command-line parameter or by tab if all pages are loaded (controlled by command-line parameter).

Features

Ilia provides pages to view and select from the following types of things:

• Desktop Apps (apps)
• System Commands (terminal)
• Desktop Keybindings (keybindings)
• Notifications (notifications)
• Text List (textlist)
• File Search (tracker)
• Open Windows (windows)

Usage

Ilia can be launched from a terminal. The -p option allows to specify which page to present to the user.

Ex:

ilia -p keybindings

Desktop Apps

Ilia searches the system-configured $XDG_DATA_DIRS with applications applied at the end of each path for desktop application files. For example, if your system has $HOME/.local/share in the set of paths in $XDG_DATA_DIRS, the path $HOME/.local/share/applications/ will be searched for desktop app files.

Text List

The textlist page is a bit different than the others pages. It provides a general purpose utility to provide a list of options for the user select and when the selection occurs, the selected item is returned by the invocation to ilia. In this way the program can be used in scripts to get user input from dynamic data, similar to rofi. The textlist page supports two additional parameters for more customization:

'textlist' - select an item from a specified list
        -l: page label
        -i: page icon

Configuration

Ilia supports the following configuration via gsettings under the namespace org.regolith-linux.ilia:

• window-width: width of window in pixels
• window-height: height of window in pixels
• icon-size: size of icons in pixels or 0 to disable icons

Example: Resetting screen width

gsettings reset org.regolith-linux.ilia window-width

Dependencies

Notifications

This page communicates with the Rofication daemon for managing desktop notifications.

Keybindings

This page uses the comment format specified by Remontoire and reads the i3 config via it's local socket.

Build

Ilia uses meson and ninja to build:

git clone https://github.com/regolith-linux/ilia.git
mkdir ilia/build
cd ilia/build
meson ..
ninja
src/ilia

By default, Ilia builds with release optimizations. For debug builds:

meson setup builddebug --buildtype=debug
ninja -C builddebug

Lint

In a build dir run this to execute uncrustify:

ninja fixstyle

Test

Run the unit tests in a build dir with:

ninja test

For manual testing, it is useful to run with throttled CPU in debug mode, run ilia like this:

systemd-run --pipe --user --property=CPUQuota=10% --property=MemoryLimit=100M --property=MemorySwapMax=0 --property=RuntimeMaxSec=30 --collect --wait -E G_MESSAGES_DEBUG=all build/src/ilia -p apps

Otherwise, you won't be able to see the effects of any async issues, which only reveal themselves under heavy load.

You can always run ilia in debug mode by editing ~/.config/regolith3/Xresources

# In ~/.config/regolith3/Xresources
# Make this file if it doesn't exist.
# Use MOD + shift + r to reload Regolith to pick up the change
wm.program.launcher.app: G_MESSAGES_DEBUG=all ilia -p apps

And then use:

journalctl --user --follow | grep ilia

To see any debug messages from your session.

Package

Debian packages for Debian and Ubuntu are available in the Regolith package repository.