Editing Xmonad/Basic Desktop Environment Integration (section)

=Adding Xmonad to the display manager (GUI login)=
If you install xmonad using a distribution package, it will usually register a number of xmonad session types (typically bare xmonad and xmonad with Gnome). If you install via darcs or cabal-install, you will probably need to create an xmonad session definition by hand.

These files are examples, but likely to be directly usable.

For xmonad to start automatically on login you need an <code>applications/xmonad.desktop</code> file on your system. If your distro doesn't provide it, create the following file:
<pre>
$ cat /usr/share/applications/xmonad.desktop
[Desktop Entry]
Type=Application
Encoding=UTF-8
Name=Xmonad
Exec=xmonad
NoDisplay=true
X-GNOME-WMName=Xmonad
X-GNOME-Autostart-Phase=WindowManager
X-GNOME-Provides=windowmanager
X-GNOME-Autostart-Notify=false
</pre>
(The X-GNOME entries do not cause GNOME to be invoked, but do allow it to be used *with* GNOME in the future if you so choose.)
Alternatively, you can create the above as <code>~/.local/share/applications/xmonad.desktop</code> for the current user only.

The above simply registers xmonad as a valid window manager; to also make an xmonad session available, you need an <code>xsessions/xmonad.desktop</code> file. To start a minimal xmonad session from gdm (see notes* below to run more than just xmonad on login), create the following file:
<pre>
$ cat /usr/share/xsessions/xmonad.desktop 
[Desktop Entry]
Encoding=UTF-8
Name=XMonad
Comment=Lightweight tiling window manager
Exec=xmonad
Icon=xmonad.png
Type=XSession
</pre>

Your display manager must also be able to find the xmonad executable. If you are not using your distro package manager to install xmonad, for best results configure your build to install xmonad to a location in the system environment like /usr/local/bin/.

<nowiki>*NOTE:</nowiki> Using an <code>xsessions/xmonad.desktop</code> file that runs a custom script <code>xmonad.start</code> instead of just plain xmonad is also how to add other startup actions to the gdm xmonad.desktop startup, such as starting gnome daemons, apps, etc. See
[http://arjuna.deltoso.net/articoli/my-configuration-of-xmonad-window-manager-with-xmobar-and-trayer/en arjuna's blog] for more details. (simono says: Creating <code>/usr/share/xsessions/xmonad.desktop</code> and <code>/usr/local/bin/xmonad.start</code> files is the preferred method for configuring an alternative window manager. The applications/xmonad.desktop file is still required.) However, see the xsession section below to continue using the classic ~/.xsession method to run a custom session.