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qubes-label-tt

README.md

qubes-label-tt notes

A utility to list, create, get value, get index or remove Qubes OS labels. It could use default Vector Perfect Qute Sushi icons for new labels and tint them, or user could provide their own custom SVG icons for all or some classes of VMs. A fairly self explanatory command help is at the top of the script. A set of Qubes themed icons suitable to be used with this tool are included in icons sub-directory.

Internals & Features

This tool is fully modular. Most of operations are wrapped in individual functions. It entirely works in user-space. Icons for new labels are copied to ~/.local/share/icons/hicolor/ directory. No need for sudo or root privileges. RGB-to-HSV, HSV-to-RGB and tinting are implemented in pure bash without any floating point calculations. Most probably only of its kind.

Installation & Removal

To install the tool at your ~/bin directory, run this command in the current directory

make install

To remove it from your system, run this command in the current directory:

make remove

Limitations & Issues

These are the current known limitation with this tool or Qubes OS custom labels:

  • Rewrite of the project in Python is necessary, keeping its skeleton, function and syntax but implement it in Python. This would be absolutely essential if it is going to be submitted as a community package. Few days work.
  • Installation & removal of icons via xdg-icon-resource(1) is necessary. As it is the right way. Proper study of XDG documents is needed.
  • Proper unit tests should be written.
  • Only tested on Qubes OS 4.2.1. Backward compatibility is unknown.
  • Qubes OS Admin API calls are made via qubesd-query(1) which is only available in dom0. I did not manage to find proper package to install it in a GUIVM. Full rewrite in Python or a Python bridge should be possible to resolve this issue..
  • RGB-to-HSV and back might be 0.4% off due to Bash's integer-only calculation.
  • Color presentation via --ANSI option is limited to 256 colors of xfce4-terminal or xterm.
  • Qubes OS Update GUI (qubes-update-gui) Qube name text render for custom labels is wrong in light themes. It is because of hard-coded CSS tags. Add this line to /usr/lib/python3.11/site-packages/qui/styles/qubes-colors-light.css to fix the issue:
label {color: #000000;}

or run:

sudo make fixupdategui
  • Use of (-) character in labels crashes some of the GUI tools. For example this line in Qubes Manager should be:
vmtype, vmcolor = vm.icon.split("-", 1)
  • User custom labels might conflict with future official labels. Maybe adding a suffix (e.g., custom, user, my, ...) to label name would mitigate conflicts.
  • Maximum allowed label length is not specified by the API. Valid characters are not specified by the API documentation. It is not clear if the tool should perform text sanitization or API will do it.
  • It is not clear if deleting of standard labels should be allowed or disallowed. Currently only removal of 'red' label is prohibited.
  • A GUI version of this tool might be necessary for non-tech-savvy users.

Credits

Qubes-Scripts has been an inspiration for this tool.

Screenshots

Qubes Manager & Qubes Domains after adding some of my personal labels:

Qubes Label Picker look and feel:

Qubes Devices Systray App:

Qubes Update after applying the CSS patch:

Qubes Appmenu Favorite tab (including some other Tweak Tool effects):

Qubes Appmenu Apps tab:

Qubes Appmenu Template tab. Mostly tinted Qute Sushi icons for new labels:

Traditional Orthodox XFCE Appmenu: