XSession
Note
My modified Makefile installs DWM as a session automagically. I think. Maybe check out the Makefile. Steps below should not be necessary.
You might want to add DWM as a session to start it conveniently from a display manager.
.desktop file
For displaymanagers that parse these. As root create a file like this:
[Desktop Entry]
Encoding=UTF-8
Name=dwm
Comment=Dynamic window manager
Exec=dwm
Icon=dwm
Type=XSession
with these permissions
$ ls -l /usr/share/xsessions/dwm.desktop
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 108 Jun 27 17:24 /usr/share/xsessions/dwm.desktop
Execute a script
Optionally rather than executing dwm directly you could execute a shell script instead that writes stdout / stderr to a file for logging purposes. This also helps to autostart apps
So the .desktop file should be modified to have
Exec=startdwm
and you need a file with executable permissions
#!/bin/sh
echo "$(date): Starting dwn" >> /path/to/logs/$(date +%Y-%m-%d_%H.dwm.log)
dwm >> /path/to/logs/$(date +%Y-%m-%d_%H.dwm.log) 2>&1
Debian alternatives
For some displaymanagers, like XDM.
You may add your session with something like:
$ sudo update-alternatives --install /usr/bin/x-session-manager x-session-manager /usr/local/bin/startdwm 50
$ sudo update-alternatives --config x-session-manager
Credits
Thank you u/bakkeby for providing some of this information on Reddit https://www.reddit.com/r/suckless/comments/jj61py/comment/gaanvez/