+++
date = 2022-12-17
title = "Simple Terminal"
description = "An easy guide on how to build st on Fedora Workstation."
+++

## st

[st](https://st.suckless.org) standards for Simple Terminal, a simple terminal 
implementation for X made by the [suckless](https://suckless.org) team.

This post walks through the dependencies needed and process to build and install 
`st` on Fedora Workstation.

### Obtain Files

To start, obtain the source files for `st` via `git clone`.

```sh
mkdir ~/suckless && cd ~/suckless
git clone https://git.suckless.org/st && cd st
```

### Dependencies

Once you have the files and are in the `st` directory, ensure the following 
packages are installed.

```sh
sudo dnf update && sudo dnf upgrade
sudo dnf install gcc patch libX11-devel libXft-devel
```

### Building

Before building, ensure that you read the README file.

```sh
cat README
```

Once you've read the instructions, open the `config.mk` file and ensure it 
matches your setup. If you're not sure, leave the default options within the 
file.

Finally, you can build `st` with the following command. Ensure you run as root 
(e.g., `sudo`) or else you may not end up with a usable application file.

```sh
sudo make clean install
```

### Customization (Patches)

Note that customizing `st` requires you to modify the source files or to 
download one of the [available patches](https://st.suckless.org/patches/) for 
suckless.org.

If you've already installed `st` and want to customize or install a patch, start 
by uninstalling the current program.

```sh
cd ~/suckless/st
sudo make uninstall
```

Next, grab the `<path>.diff` file from the page of the patch you chose. For 
example, I will be using the 
[defaultfontsize](https://st.suckless.org/patches/defaultfontsize/) patch in the below example.

```sh
wget https://st.suckless.org/patches/defaultfontsize/st-defaultfontsize-20210225-4ef0cbd.diff
```

Once the file is downloaded inside the `st` folder, apply the patch and 
re-install the program. You may need to install the `patch` command if you don't 
have it installed already (you should have installed it above).

```sh
patch -i st-defaultfontsize-20210225-4ef0cbd.diff
sudo make clean install
```

Once installed, you can use the default font size patch to launch `st` with any 
font size you wish:

```sh
st -z 16
```