commands I use to study/debug keymaps in Linux

xkb keymap testing

Current (unresolved) keymap file
================================

The following command prints one include statement for each component of the
current keymap:

   $ setxkbmap -print
   
Note that this is not a resolved keymap file!. Quite the opposite, it shows
what will be passed to xkbcomp as components so that it resolves them to an
actual keymap. A possible output could be:

xkb_keymap {
	xkb_keycodes  { include "evdev+aliases(qwerty)"	};
	xkb_types     { include "complete"	};
	xkb_compat    { include "complete"	};
	xkb_symbols   { include "pc+latam+us:2+inet(evdev)"	};
	xkb_geometry  { include "pc(pc105)"	};
};

When passed into xkbcomp each include statement will be 'resolved'. This
resolution process takes the string "pc+latam+us:2+inet(evdev)" and interprets
it as follows: Merge files "pc" and "latam", then merge the "us" file
into the 2nd group, finally merge the component named "evdev" inside the "inet"
file. Because this include statement is inside a component of type xkb_symbols,
the files "us", "latam", "pc" and "inet" will be looked for inside the
<xkb data>/symbols/ directory.

NOTE: <xkb data> is usually /usr/share/X11/xkb/

Get current resolved file
=========================

To print the current keymap but after resolution use:

    $ xkbcomp -xkb $DISPLAY resolved_keymap.xkb

NOTE: It does not output to stdout but instead writes into resolved_keymap.xkb