The Qtile command shell is a command-line shell interface that provides access to the full complement of Qtile command functions. The shell features command name completion, and full command documentation can be accessed from the shell itself. The shell uses GNU Readline when it's available, so the interface can be configured to, for example, obey VI keybindings with an appropriate .inputrc file. See the GNU Readline documentation for more information.

Navigating the Object Graph

The shell presents a filesystem-like interface to the object graph - the builtin "cd" and "ls" commmands act like their familiar shell counterparts:

> ls
layout/  widget/  screen/  bar/     window/  group/ 

> cd bar

bar> ls
bottom/

bar> cd bottom

bar['bottom']> ls
screen/

bar['bottom']> cd ../..

> ls
layout/  widget/  screen/  bar/     window/  group/ 

Note that the shell provides a "short-hand" for specifying node keys (as opposed to children). The following is a valid shell path:

> cd group/4/window/31457314

The command prompt will, however, always display the Python node path that should be used in scripts and key bindings:

group['4'].window[31457314]> 

Documentation

The shell help provides the canonical documentation for the Qtile API:

> cd layout/1

layout[1]> help
help command   -- Help for a specific command.

Builtins:
=========
cd    exit  help  ls    q     quit

Commands for this object:
=========================
add           commands      current       delete        doc           down          get         
info          items         next          previous      rotate        shuffle_down  shuffle_up  
toggle_split  up          

layout[1]> help previous
previous()
Focus previous stack.