File manager shfm now in initrd

Technically, the initrd in EasyOS is a initramfs, initrd is the old name given before the initramfs was introduced. Anyway, here is an earlier post about the 'nnn' file manager:

https://bkhome.org/news/202008/nnn-file-manager-now-in-initrd.html

'nnn' is a binary executable, about 430KB, stripped and statically-linked with musl.

Dylan Araps saw my blog post. He is the author of 'fff', a file manager written in bash, that I had shortlisted. Dylan reckoned that he could do something that works just like 'nnn' except a fraction of the size, and written in POSIX-compatible shell script. The result is 'shfm':

https://github.com/dylanaraps/shfm

We had some communications, fixed a few things, and now it works real great in the initrd. Here is a snapshot running in a terminal emulator on the desktop:

...OK, nothing amazing to see there, but it does the job, and very intuitive to use.

You can navigate with the arrow keys "?" for popup help, "q" to quit, "!" to spawn a shell. If you press right-arrow or ENTER key while on a text file, 'mp' text editor launches. If you spawn a shell, type "exit" to get back to shfm.

'shfm' and 'nnn' might be better described as "file browsers" rather than file managers, but whatever, real nice to have in the initrd. The next release of EasyOS will have both, so users can compare them. 

Tags: easy