far2l

Linux fork of FAR Manager v2 (http://farmanager.com/)
Works also on OSX/MacOS and BSD (but later not tested on regular manner)
ALPHA VERSION.
Currently interesting only for enthusiasts!!!

Plug-ins that are currently working: NetRocks (SFTP/SCP/FTP/FTPS/SMB/NFS/WebDAV), colorer, multiarc, tmppanel, align, autowrap, drawline, editcase, SimpleIndent, Calculator, Python (optional scripting support)

FreeBSD/MacOS (Cirrus CI):

License: GNU/GPLv2

Used code from projects

• FAR for Windows
• WINE
• ANSICON
• Portable UnRAR
• 7z ANSI-C Decoder

Contributing, Hacking

Required dependencies

• gawk
• m4
• libwxgtk3.0-gtk3-dev (or in older distributives - libwxgtk3.0-dev) (needed for GUI backend, not needed with -DUSEWX=no)
• libxerces-c-dev
• libspdlog-dev
• libuchardet-dev
• libssh-dev (needed for NetRocks/SFTP)
• libssl-dev (needed for NetRocks/FTPS)
• libsmbclient-dev (needed for NetRocks/SMB)
• libnfs-dev (needed for NetRocks/NFS)
• libneon27-dev (or later, needed for NetRocks/WebDAV)
• libarchive-dev (needed for better archives support in multiarc)
• libpcre3-dev (or in older distributives - libpcre2-dev) (needed for custom archives support in multiarc)
• cmake ( >= 3.2.2 )
• g++
• git (needed for downloading source code)

Or simply on Debian/Ubuntu:

apt-get install gawk m4 libwxgtk3.0-gtk3-dev libpcre3-dev libxerces-c-dev libspdlog-dev libuchardet-dev libssh-dev libssl-dev libsmbclient-dev libnfs-dev libneon27-dev libarchive-dev cmake g++ git

In older distributives: use libpcre2-dev and libwxgtk3.0-dev instead of libpcre3-dev and libwxgtk3.0-gtk3-dev

Clone and Build

git clone https://github.com/elfmz/far2l
cd far2l
mkdir _build
cd _build

with make:

cmake -DUSEWX=yes -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release ..
make -j$(nproc --all)

or with ninja (you need ninja-build package installed)

cmake -DUSEWX=yes -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release -G Ninja ..
ninja

OSX/MacOS install

• You can install prebuilt package for x86_64 platform via Homebrew Cask, by command:

brew install --cask far2l

• You can also manually download and install prebuilt package for x86_64 platform from Releases page: https://github.com/elfmz/far2l/releases
• But if you need custom/recent build, you can proceed to build steps below: using brew or MacPorts.
• Supported compiler: AppleClang 8.0.0.x or newer. Check your version, and install/update Xcode if necessary.

clang++ -v

• If you want to build using Homebrew - first visit https://brew.sh/ for installation instructions. Note that there're reported problems with Homebrew-based build under MacOS Big Sur.
• If you want to build using MacPorts - first visit https://www.macports.org/install.php for installation instructions.

One line OSX/MacOS install latest far2l git master via unofficial brew tap

• With GUI/TTY backends:

brew install --HEAD yurikoles/yurikoles/far2l

• With TTY backend only:

brew install --HEAD yurikoles/yurikoles/far2l --without-wxwidgets

• Additionally you can enable python support by adding --with-python@3.9

Full OSX/MacOS build from sources (harder):

Some issues can be caused by conflicting dependencies, like having two versions of wxWidgets, so avoid such situation when installing dependecies.

• Clone:

git clone https://github.com/elfmz/far2l
cd far2l

• Install needed dependencies with MacPorts:

sudo port install cmake gawk pkgconfig wxWidgets-3.2 libssh openssl xercesc3 libfmt spdlog uchardet neon

• OR if you prefer to use brew packages, then:

brew bundle -v

• After dependencies installed - you can build far2l: with make:

mkdir _build
cd _build
cmake -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=/usr/local -DUSEWX=yes -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release ..
make -j$(sysctl -n hw.logicalcpu)

or with ninja:

mkdir _build
cd _build
cmake -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=/usr/local -DUSEWX=yes -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release -G Ninja ..
ninja

• If above commands finished without errors - you may also install far2l: with make:

make install

or with ninja:

ninja install

• If you see permission errors in install commands, just pretend sudo to them.

To build without WX backend (console version only): change -DUSEWX=yes to -DUSEWX=no also in this case dont need to install libwxgtk*-dev package

To save space by exluding support of East Asian codepages set: add -DEACP=no

To eliminate libuchardet requirement to reduce far2l dependencies by cost of losing automatic charset detection functionality: add -DUSEUCD=no

To build with Python plugin: add argument -DPYTHON=yes

There're also options to toggle other plugins build in same way: ALIGN AUTOWRAP CALC COLORER COMPARE DRAWLINE EDITCASE EDITORCOMP FARFTP FILECASE INCSRCH INSIDE MULTIARC NETROCKS SIMPLEINDENT TMPPANEL

Building on Gentoo (and derivatives)

For absolute minimum you need:

emerge -avn dev-libs/xerces-c app-i18n/uchardet dev-util/cmake dev-libs/spdlog

If you want to build far2l with wxGTK support also install it:

emerge -avn x11-libs/wxGTK

Additionally, for NetRocks you will need:

emerge -avn net-libs/neon net-libs/libssh net-fs/libnfs net-fs/samba

After installing, follow Clone and Build section above.

Building DMG, DEB and TGZ packages

Please follow CMake related instructions from previous step to build the project, then run:

cpack

to generate the following packages (depending on architecture):

• far2l-2.X.X.dmg
• far2l_2.X.X_ARCH.deb
• far2l-2.X.X.tar.gz

All packages can be found in build folder.

Installing and Building on NixOS

To install system-wide, add the far2l package to your configuration.nix environment.systemPackages list. To run the application on-demand without affecting the system state, execute nix-shell -p far2l --command far2l. These use a package version from your current channel.

The Far2l adaptation for nix is a small file on GitHub, it tells which Git revision from Far2l repo to fetch, with what dependencies to build it, and how to patch its references to other software to make it run in isolated fashion independently from other versions available in the system.

You can build and run far2l package for any revision:

• Directly from GitHub (NixOS/nixpkgs repo, or your own fork and branch):

nix-shell -I nixpkgs=https://github.com/<fork>/nixpkgs/archive/<revision-or-branch>.tar.gz -p far2l --command far2l

• From a locally cloned working directory of the repo:

nix-shell -I nixpkgs=/path/to/nixpkgs -p far2l --command far2l

To advance the package to a new Far2l revision, edit the fetchFromGitHub set attributes rev (revision hash) and sha256 (revision content hash). Important! If you leave the old content hash, the old cached content for that hash might be used without attempting to download the new revision. If you're not expecting the build to break, the easiest would be to make a fork, push the change, and build straight from github.

IDE Setup

You can import the project into your favourite IDE like QtCreator, CodeLite, or any other, which supports cmake or which cmake is able to generate projects for.

• QtCreator: select "Open Project" and point QtCreator to the CMakeLists.txt in far2l root directory
• CodeLite: use this guide to setup a project: https://wiki.codelite.org/pmwiki.php/Main/TheCMakePlugin (to avoid polluting your source tree, don't create your workspace inside of the far2l directory)

Useful 3rd-party extras

• A collection of macros for far2l: https://github.com/corporateshark/far2l-macros
• Fork of Putty (Windows SSH client) with added far2l TTY extensions support (fluent keypresses, clipboard sharing etc): https://github.com/unxed/putty4far2l
• Tool to import color schemes from windows FAR manager 2 .reg format: https://github.com/unxed/far2l-deb/blob/master/far2l_import.pl

Notes on porting

I implemented/borrowed from WINE some commonly used WinAPI functions. They are all declared in WinPort/WinPort.h and corresponding defines can be found in WinPort/WinCompat.h (both are included by WinPort/windows.h). Note that this stuff may not be 1-to-1 to corresponding Win32 functionality also doesn't provide full-UNIX functionality, but it simplifies porting and can be considered as temporary scaffold.

However, only the main executable is linked statically to WinPort, although it also exports WinPort functionality, so plugins use it without the neccessity to bring their own copies of this code. This is the reason that each plugin's binary should not statically link to WinPort.

While FAR internally is UTF16 (because WinPort contains UTF16-related stuff), native Linux wchar_t size is 4 bytes (rather than 2 bytes) so potentially Linux FAR may be fully UTF32-capable console interaction in the future, but while it uses Win32-style UTF16 functions it does not. However, programmers need to be aware that wchar_t is not 2 bytes long anymore.

Inspect all printf format strings: unlike Windows, in Linux both wide and multibyte printf-like functions have the same multibyte and wide specifiers. This means that %s is always multibyte while %ls is always wide. So, any %s used in wide-printf-s or %ws used in any printf should be replaced with %ls.

Update from 27aug: now it's possible by defining WINPORT_DIRECT to avoid renaming used Windows API and also to avoid changing format strings as swprintf will be intercepted by a compatibility wrapper.

Plugin API

Plugins API based on FAR Manager v2 plus following changes:

Added following entries to FarStandardFunctions:

• int Execute(const wchar_t *CmdStr, unsigned int ExecFlags); ...where ExecFlags - combination of values of EXECUTEFLAGS. Executes given command line, if EF_HIDEOUT and EF_NOWAIT are not specified then command will be executed on far2l virtual terminal.

• int ExecuteLibrary(const wchar_t *Library, const wchar_t *Symbol, const wchar_t *CmdStr, unsigned int ExecFlags) Executes given shared library symbol in separate process (process creation behaviour is the same as for Execute). symbol function must be defined as: int 'Symbol'(int argc, char *argv[])

• void DisplayNotification(const wchar_t *action, const wchar_t *object); Shows (depending on settings - always or if far2l in background) system shell-wide notification with given title and text.

• int DispatchInterThreadCalls(); far2l supports calling APIs from different threads by marshalling API calls from non-main threads into main one and dispatching them on main thread at certain known-safe points inside of dialog processing loops. DispatchInterThreadCalls() allows plugin to explicitely dispatch such calls and plugin must use it periodically in case it blocks main thread with some non-UI activity that may wait for other threads.

Added following commands into FILE_CONTROL_COMMANDS:

• FCTL_GETPANELPLUGINHANDLE Can be used to interract with plugin that renders other panel. hPlugin can be set to PANEL_ACTIVE or PANEL_PASSIVE. Param1 ignored. Param2 points to value of type HANDLE, call sets that value to handle of plugin that renders specified panel or INVALID_HANDLE_VALUE.

Added following plugin-exported functions:

• int MayExitFARW(); far2l asks plugin if it can exit now. If plugin has some background tasks pending it may block exiting of far2l, however it highly recommended to give user choice using UI prompt.

Added following dialog messages:

• DM_GETCOLOR - retrieves get current color attributes of selected dialog item
• DM_SETCOLOR - changes current color attributes of selected dialog item