default

System for choosing default applications, programs, and utilities

TODO: generate executables for fast exec

Use Cases

Like update-alternatives, but local to user and more flexible. Requires a database of applications and their defaults at "${XDG_CONFIG_HOME:-$HOME/.config}/chooses/defaults"

1. Launch with file

Control which applications are selected when opening a file. This works irrespective of the desktop environment. xdg-open falls flat because it doesn't work with directories. Furthermore, different applications can be configured to work in a different context (X, Terminal emulator, Linux console).

Since these are just shell scripts, arbitrary arguments should be supported, like --column and --row for example, if using a text editor.

2. Launch without file

The current 'Browser' or 'Image Viewer' can be launched. Again, this is intended to work across distributions and user interfaces.

See more info in details.md

Roadmap

• 'get' subcommand
• use choose when using fuzzer / filter (dmenu vs rofi -dmenu, etc.)
• sourcing pre-exec does does output on --verbose flag (or another)
• GUI selector (select via GUI if there are multiple options), optional
• doctor command to ensure that git config attributes, ranger attributes, etc. are all valid and point to choose properly
• before launch dialog, have UI where can download the application with help of (woof?)

Application / Category Attributions

• cli vs tui vs gui
• use on conditions (only X11, wayland, etc. have fallback (ordering))
• launching vs shell (interactive, non-interactive), DE (.desktop, etc.), tty vs ptty etc.
• an editor vs viewer
• ones meant to generalize across application vs choosing a specific thing (without last common denominator cli argument flags, etc. compatability)
  • capability based?
• printing to stdout, running a blocking application, running a non-blocking application, exec'ing into a new process, and running a daemon
• execution helpers (if it requires a terminal, must wrap it in terminal invocation)

Installation

cargo install exa