Package: ruamel.bws
The ProblemOn Linux, after a re-login, Firefox and Chrome can restore their
previous windows’ contents and positions. However they do not normally
restore these windows in the different workspaces/desktops that you
may be using.If the desktop manager implements workspaces by using offsets (wider or
higher than the desktop resolution) restoration works as offsets “push” the
window to the right workspace on restoration. Such a workspace setup often
implies you see a window that you moveover the edge of one workspace show up
on the next one. KDE seems to have used such a scheme in the period
2010-2013.Browsers would need to beEWMHaware, which
they currently aren’t.A partial solutionBrowser windows usually have the name of the page
visited in the title, which makes instances of the browser windows relatively
uniquely identifiable. Based on that, you can save the state of the browser
windows in a file, and restore windows with matching titles to the original
workspace.This program will not work correctly if a browser window has the same title
on multiple workspaces and only has differing secondary tabs. If two, single
tab windows have the same title, they probably point to the same URL, and in
that case which one gets restored to what workspace, is less important (unless
the history makes a difference).InstallationFirst, make sure your linux version haswmctrlinstalled.You can usepipto install the program:pip install ruamel.bwsYou can also install theconfigobjlibrary
(withpip) and directly download and use the main Python file.UsageRunbws saveto save the current browser windows,bws restoreto restore the latest saved setup. Before restoring usingbws restore, reopen the browser windows and select [Restore] as
necessary.Chrome needs to be configured to allow restoring by selecting “Continue where
you left off”, in thesettings menu. Firefox always seems to ask
when a crash occured, but you can also explicitlyset the preferencesto “Show my windows and tabs from last time”number of saved .bws filesThe number of different old configurations saved, can be specified by
the--keepcommandline option, or in the configuration file. It
is set to 10 by default. After saving a filebwscompares the new
file to the previous one,if the contents are the same, it deletes the new one
and touches the previous one. If there are more.bwsfiles than the keep option
specifies, the oldest that are in excess of that are deleted.From the filename of the.bwsyou can see when it was first saved, and
from it timestamp (st_mtime, whenbws savewas last run.ConfigurationThe program keeps configuration defaults and restore information in (by
default)~/.config/bwsinbws.iniresp.*.bwsfiles. Multiple
restore settings are kept (which might be a privacy issue for you), andbws listwill show you which ones are kept (with a date-time-stamp).bws restorecan take
an argument to select a specific “save”The config file allows to expand the patterns that are matched on where/proc/PID/exepoints to, to identify the windows for which information
needs saving. A minimum number of windows can be specified that are necessary
for restoring (in the configuration file or on the commandline; the
commandline overrules the configuration file). This minimum prevents saves of
browser windows when a single window is open, e.g. the one asking you for confirmation to
restore all previously opened windows.ChromeChrome’s executable used to be calledchromium-browserand that is what you find
in config files of pre-0.3.3 installations. You might want to upgrade and either
remove thebws.inifile (so it will be regenerated), or make the chrome entry read:[br-chrome]
basenamestart = chromium-browser, chromeCronI runbwsfrom crontab file every five minutes like this:*/5 *  *   *   *     DISPLAY=:0 /home/anthon/bin/bws save --checkthe--checkonly works if the file specified with--unlock-fileexists. This
defaults to/tmp/bws.restored(which is usually on a temporary filesystem, so
will not be availalbe after restart, thus preventing further saves).Issuingbws restoreremoves this unlock file, unless you specify–unlock, which I do
on the last run, after Firefox has reloaded all pages, and restoring is complete..This unlock-file prevents cron from writing save files that will eventually overwrite useful
information from before a restart.ToDocheck windows position for multiple occuring same strings (assuming positions
differ, this gives additional info for workspace determination)Firefoxhttps://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=372650https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/firefox/+bug/684982Chromehttps://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=18596https://groups.google.com/a/chromium.org/forum/#!topic/chromium-discuss/h8tY-p-gXIEKDE used to workhttps://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=297864