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newsnnn file manager now in initrd
I posted yesterday about dropping out to the shell in the initrd,
and the new 'mp' console editor:
https://bkhome.org/news/202008/dropping-out-to-shell-in-initrd.html
I have been testing lots of different console file managers, and
have settled on 'nnn'. It varied from too crude, non-intuitive, up
to too sophisticated and too many dependencies. The initrd is a
minimal Linux environment, based on 'bash' and with only
statically-linked binaries. Some console file managers expect
utilities to be there that aren't, and some link in libraries that
bloat the binary beyond what is required.
'nnn' forked from 'noice'. The latter is simple, and would do the
job, except that color-highlighting didn't work when compiled with
musl, and was unable to invoke external apps such as 'mp'.
Probably could have been fixed, but 'nnn' works.
Here is the 'noice' project page:
And for 'nnn':
Both projects are active, 'nnn' very much so. Photo from the
'nnn' project page:
...at this stage, I have no idea how to use those tabs, nor how
to get the dual-pane. This review shows UI snapshots that look
like what I am getting:
...ah, I see, "?" brings up a list of keyboard actions. Here is a
review on YouTube:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KuJHo-aO_FA
...the 'nnn' in the review has all the configure options enabled,
like mouse support. Here are other console file managers
that I considered:
https://lecram.github.io/p/rover/
https://github.com/dylanaraps/fff
https://midnight-commander.org/
https://github.com/mananapr/cfiles
https://vifm.info/
https://github.com/FedeDP/ncursesFM
https://www.han.de/~werner/ytree.html
http://www.clex.sk/
https://github.com/mariostg/nffm
'nnn' is now in the initrd, in /bin. There is also /sbin/xdg-open
and /etc/nnn/plugins, configured to launch 'mp' for any text file.
Threw in /nnn.txt help file, as the app is keyboard-driven,
without any keyboard help within the app. However, it is pretty
intuitive, navigate with the arrow keys, "q" to quit, "]" for a
commandline. There are reminders about those keys when dropout
from the 'init' script.
The 'nnn' binary is 437KB. The only libs it linked to were
libncursesw and libtinfo. There were some optional, such as
libreadline, that I left out. And some other configure options I
disabled, not knowing what they do.
Here are the latest recipes for OpenEmbedded:
http://distro.ibiblio.org/easyos/project/oe/
Tags: easy