Bug#1060218: xmobar: cannot run with Wireless plugin

[Paul Fertser]

Hi Ilias,

On Wed, Jan 10, 2024 at 05:13:27PM +0200, Ilias Tsitsimpis wrote:
> On Sun, Jan 07, 2024 at 07:45PM, Dominik Szmek wrote:
> > After removing libiw-dev dependency (#1058738) xmobar fails to run
> > with Wireless plugin in the config file.
> 
> Xmobar depends on the netlink [1] Haskell library for the Wireless
> functionality. Unfortunately this library seems to be unmaintained,
> that's why we haven't packaged it for Debian yet. We need someone to

Even though it's indeed not maintained it still builds just fine, and
since it's packaged in NixOS and Fedora it's likely that if it one day
FTBFSs a patch fixing it will appear soon, and it's not like Debian
policy disallows adding trivial build fix patches in cases like
that. So this dependency is not currently problematic from technical
point of view. And in case it really starts to be you can drop it when
the time comes.

Having xmobar show current wireless parameters (SSID and signal level)
is kind of essential for laptops; one can get that information by
parsing "iw dev wlan0 link" output but that is clumsy and uncool when
there's a good integrated xmobar mechanism.

Please consider bringing this functionality back somehow (e.g. Fedora
builds netlink as part of xmobar itself and doesn't package separately).

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