App2Unit

Launch Desktop Entries (or arbitrary commands) as Systemd user units, and do it fast.

Based heavily on mechanisms and optimizations introduced into xdg-terminal-exec by @fluvf, it performs function similar to (and behaves similarly to) uwsm's app subcommand, but without costly startup of python interpreter or necessity of having a daemon running for speeding things up. If run on a fast shell (such as dash) with system stored on an SSD, overhead can be as short as ~0.03s, with systemd-run giving additional ~0.03s.

Syntax

app2unit \
  [-h | --help]
  [-s a|b|s|custom.slice] \
  [-t scope|service] \
  [-a app_name | -u unit_id] \
  [-d description] \
  [-S out|err|both] \
  [-T] \
  [--fuzzel-compat] \
  [--test]
  [--] \
  {entry-id.desktop | entry-id.desktop:action-id | command} \
  [args ...]

See --help for more info.

Fuzzel integration

Can be integrated into Fuzzel launcher via its launch prefix feature: --launch-prefix='app2unit --fuzzel-compat --'. app2unit will use command line provided by Fuzzel as is, but currently it will have to re-find and re-parse desktop entry to extract metadata since Fuzzel can only tell it Desktop Entry ID and nothing more.

UWSM integration

Transparently, via having environment variables in your sessions:

To use UWSM's custom slices:

APP2UNIT_SLICES=a=app-graphical.slice b=background-graphical.slice s=session-graphical.slice

To change default unit type:

APP2UNIT_TYPE=service