Execute wmctrl commands in xinitrc

Question

I'm using XMonad configured to accept commands through wmctrl and would like to start up a few applications through xinitrc and move them to a certain workspace.

Those commands work, when I use the through the terminal:

# Launch a terminal with ncmpcpp and move it to workspace 9
urxvt -e ncmpcpp && wmctrl -r ncmpcpp -t 9 

But if I try to put them into my .xinitrc they are not working anymore. The applications start-up, but aren't moved to the correct screen. I suspect this is because the calls execute before xmonad has been executed.

xinitrc:

(urxvt -e ncmpcpp && wmctrl -r ncmpcpp -t 9) &
exec xmonad

I already tried adding a sleep-period, but this did not help either and I would like to get this working reliably:

(urxvt -e ncmpcpp && sleep 5 && wmctrl -r ncmpcpp -t 9) &
exec xmonad

Answer 1

You need to execute xmonad before launching terminals and trying to move them.

xmonad &
(urxvt -e ncmpcpp && wmctrl -r ncmpcpp -t 9)