ssstatus

ssstatus is a small C utility that prints a compact system status line to standard output. It is designed to be used as a status bar on tiling window manager setups or terminal environments where a single line of live information is enough. It is heavily inspired by dwmblocks, taking the same minimal “one-line status output” philosophy and the delayed update with manual updating via signals while staying portable and easy to customize.

The program updates:

• CPU usage
• memory/RAM usage
• battery percentage
• custom user provided shell command outputs
• current time

It refreshes on a timer and can also be nudged via signals to update immediately.

Features

• lightweight, single-process stdout status reporter
• configurable update intervals
• custom command output slots
• generated status line suitable for status bars or shell scripts

Build

From the project root:

make

This compiles the binary as ssstatus.

To rebuild with debugging symbols:

make debug

To remove generated build artifacts:

make clean

Run

./ssstatus

Example on dwl

ssstatus | dwl

The program continuously writes a line like this to stdout:

<custom1> | <custom2> | <custom3> | BAT: 82.00% | RAM: 48.12% | CPU: 12.34% | Sat, Aug 22 | 15:42:18

Configuration

The build system generates config.h from config.def.h before compiling:

config.h: config.def.h
	cp config.def.h config.h

This means you usually edit config.def.h to change:

• which modules are enabled
• their update intervals
• which signal each module reacts to
• the output format string
• custom command entries

The default configuration includes:

• CPU module
• RAM module
• battery module
• three custom command slots

Signals

The program registers handlers for the configured module/custom-command signals. When a signal is received, that item is marked for refresh immediately rather than waiting for its interval.

Common signals used by the project include:

• SIGUSR1 for CPU
• SIGUSR2 for RAM
• SIGPWR for battery
• custom signal 34 for command refreshes (please note that on OpenBSD the signals range from 1-31 instead of the usual 1-64 because the system chooses not to implement RT signals)

Project layout

• main.c — main event loop and signal handling
• config.def.h — configurable module list and formatting
• config.h — generated config used at build time
• assets/ — module implementations and helper code
• Makefile — build rules

Notes

This project is intentionally minimal and focused on outputting a status line to stdout. It draws heavy inspiration from dwmblocks, but keeps a simpler, self-contained C implementation. It is useful as a base for custom status bars, desktop widgets, or scripts that want lightweight live system information without a larger framework.