settingsctl

Different desktop environments on *nix usually have different configuration methods for the same setting. This makes it hard for developers to handle desktop settings in their program.

settingsctl is a cross-desktop (*nix) tool to handle desktop settings.

This was also the aim of xdg-settings. But xdg-settings doesn't really work.

For more information (and the documentation) see the website.

Getting started

Ensure you have Python 3. You probably already have it.

1. Download settingsctl here (zip)

2. Either:

   1. Install settingsctl system-wide (sudo ./install.py)
   2. Install settingsctl for your user (./install.py --user)
   3. Or just run it (./settingsctl --help)

Examples:

$ settingsctl get appearance.desktop.wallpaper
/path/to/wallpaper

$ settingsctl get power.screen-lock.enabled
true

$ settingsctl set power.screen-lock.timeout 20

Also see Documentation::Tutorial.

Features

• Support for nearly every setting you may find in a desktop environment's settings. (To be done by v1.0)
• Support for nearly every desktop environment (Yours isn't supported? File an issue!) (To be done by v1.0)
• Support for optional JSON output format for easy parsing
• Extensive documentation

Contributing

(Quality) Contributions are always welcome. Here you will find how to go about contributing to this project.

Firstly, the language: settingsctl is written in Python 3.

The coding conventions are mainly PEP8, but with one notable exception: Tabs are used instead of spaces.

See also the TODO file included, which has a list of things to be done.

Contributing a new setting

1. Fork the repository.

2. See Documentation::Creating a Setting.

3. Then file a pull request for your change.

Contributing to an existing setting

1. Fork the repository.

2. In the lib/ directory, find the Python module that defines the setting.

3. Code your contribution (feature, bug fix, etc).

4. Then file a pull request for your change.

Contributing to the settingsctl command itself

1. Fork the repository.

2. Look through the code (file: settingsctl).

3. Code your contribution (feature, bug fix, etc).

4. Then file a pull request for your change.

License

settingsctl is licensed under the GNU General Public License (GPL) version 3 (or, at your option, a later version).

settingsctl is free software: you are free to change and redistribute it. There is NO WARRANTY, to the extent permitted by law.

For the license text, see the included LICENSE file.

Versioning

Follows Semantic Versioning.

Information about changes by version can be found in CHANGELOG and the Updates page.

Why not xdg-settings

1. It's not been updated since about 2011
2. It supports only two settings: default browser and URL scheme handler

This project hopes to eventually officially (as in approved by XDG as a standard) replace the old xdg-settings.