Cagebreak

Cagebreak is a tiling compositor for Wayland, based on cage and inspired by ratpoison, which is easily controlled through the keyboard and a UNIX domain socket.

Installation

Install cagebreak^AUR or cagebreak-bin^AUR. Alternatively, download the release tarball or clone the repository.

Optional dependencies

wl-clipboard for copy/paste capabilities
xorg-xwayland for allowing Xorg applications to run under cagebreak

Configuration

The general configuration for cagebreak is located in $XDG_CONFIG_PATH/cagebreak/config. This defaults to ~/.config/cagebreak/config.

Read cagebreak-config(5) for detailed information. Note that you can also add configuration by using #Interaction through socket.

An example configuration file may be found on GitHub.

Usage

Start cagebreak like any other binary.

Getting started

The following is an example of how to install and use cagebreak with the configuration file provided on GitHub.

Follow #Installation.
Copy the example configuration from GitHub to $XDG_CONFIG_PATH/cagebreak/config. Documentation is provided in cagebreak-config(5).
Install xterm or replace xterm with your preferred terminal emulator in the configuration file.
Run XKB_DEFAULT_LAYOUT=us cagebreak or autostart it to run cagebreak on login (see #Keyboard layout for details).
Cagebreak should start up and display the terminal emulator you specified above. Press C-t t to open a new terminal or C-t S to split the screen. You can also use Alt-n to switch to the workspace n. For a full list of available keybindings, read the configuration file and cagebreak-config(5).
If you wish, you may also interact with cagebreak using the UNIX domain socket. See #Interaction through socket for further information.
Also, please file any bugs you may find:
- GitHub issue tracker or via email as per the SECURITY.md for cagebreak
- AUR comments for the cagebreak-bin^AUR and cagebreak^AUR PKGBUILDs

Keyboard layout

Set the environment variable XKB_DEFAULT_LAYOUT to the desired keyboard layout. See cagebreak(1) § ENVIRONMENT for further information.

Interaction through socket

If cagebreak is invoked with the -e option, cagebreak opens a UNIX domain socket through which interaction with the compositor is possible at run-time. The path to this socket is stored in the CAGEBREAK_SOCKET environment variable. For example, openbsd-netcat may be invoked with:

$ nc -U $CAGEBREAK_SOCKET

to send cagebreak any configuration while it is running. The syntax is identical to the syntax of the configuration file.

Add the --bs (bad security) option, if you want to see the names of views over the socket (please consider the security implications on your local system).