Lite FM

Curses based file manager that caters to power users

Meant to be insanely FAST and LIGHTWEIGHT

Licensed under GNU GPL v3

Features

1. Ranger like traversal of directories (vim keybinds supported)
2. String search along with next occurance functionalities
3. Easy and Fast addition, deletion of files and directories
4. Clean and responsive TUI thanks to ncurses with cool colors and unicodes
5. Incredibly fast extraction and compression functions thanks to libarchive
6. Very transient and logical workflow
7. Insanely FAST and MODULAR Syntax Highlighting system SYNHASH

Note

For the best experience of LiteFM:

1. Ensure that your terminal has any NERD FONT enabled.

Without a nerd font, LiteFM will show some unreadable chars!

2. Dynamic resizing:

There is dynamic windowing setup in LiteFM. However,

Upon resizing, you will have to press any key for it to show!

3. Launch LiteFM with superuser

LiteFM allows for fast file/dir actions, as such it is optimal to use LiteFM with any user that has sudo permissions to make every LiteFM incredibly productive.

Usage

-> Currently LiteFM has only been tested on the following Linux Distros:

1. Arch Linux kernels >= 6.9 (zen and base) x86_64 arch (1920x1080)
2. Ubuntu versions >= 20 x86_64 arch
3. Linux Mint >= 20 x86_64 arch

-> There are no plans on expanding this beyond Linux distributions

Warning

Yanking

The yank function y (getting file location) only work with WAYLAND and X11 display servers!!

If you are on other display servers like Mir, SurfaceFlinger and yanking does NOT work:

You can create an issue or even submit a PR as per CONTRIBUTION.md

Environment Vars

LiteFM uses getenv to get the env vars $EDITOR, $VISUAL and WAYLAND_SERVER to detect the default editor, default image viewer and display server.

Hence, ensure that you have your preferred display server and editor setup in your UNIX system so that LiteFM can be even more productive to you!

To set an env var (EXAMPLE):

echo 'export EDITOR=/sbin/nvim' >> ~/.bashrc

You can set your desired $EDITOR and shell rc.

Setting your $EDITOR as any editor that creates a new window that resizes the main litefm window, will lead to litefm to look a bit weird (it will resize)

It is HIGHLY recommended that you pick a terminal editor like nano, vi, vim, nvim, so on

Also for $VISUAL it is recommended that you go for something minimal like swappy, satty, so on

You can setup $VISUAL as whatever you please (even if it creates a new window and resizes litefm)

Dependencies

As LiteFM can only be built manually, here is a table of all deps used:

Package Manager	Debian	Fedora (RPM)	Arch Linux
64-bit
	libncursesw5-dev	ncurses-devel	ncurses
	cmake	cmake	cmake
	make	make	make
	libarchive-dev	libarchive-devel	libarchive
	libyaml-dev	libyaml-devel	yaml-cpp
	rsync	rsync	rsync
	pkg-config	pkg-config	pkg-config
	libsdl2-dev	SDL2-devel	sdl2
	libsdl2-mixer-dev	SDL2_mixer-devel	sdl2_mixer
32-bit
	libncurses5-dev	ncurses-libs	lib32-ncurses5
	libarchive-dev:i386	libarchive-devel.i686	lib32-libarchive
	libyaml-dev:i386	libyaml-devel.i686	lib32-yaml-cpp
	rsync:i386	rsync.i686	lib32-rsync
	pkg-config:i386	pkg-config.i686	lib32-pkg-config
	libsdl2-dev:i386	SDL2-devel.i686	lib32-sdl2
	libsdl2-mixer-dev:i386	SDL2_mixer-devel.i686	lib32-sdl2_mixer

The above are the listed 32-bit and 64-bit libraries that are used in this project.

-> Only 64-bit libs have been tested to fruition so far

Refer to this table to understand the Building procedure better

Building

REFER TO Dependencies TO BETTER UNDERSTAND THE BUILDING PROCESS AND FLOW.

LiteFM cannot be installed in any UNIX-like distribution but can be easily built!

Note

Building LiteFM with build.sh (HIGHLY RECOMMENDED)

The script contains every method of installation, logging and setup of litefm

Just run:

chmod +x build.sh
./build.sh 

Just wait for it to setup and answer a few questions, thats it!

Building with CMake:

Ensure you have CMake installed first

-> cmake -S . -B build/ to create a build/ directory with all libraries linked as per CMakeLists.txt

-> cmake --build build/ to get the ./build/litefm executable

-> Set it as an alias in your respective shell rc and enjoy!

cmake -S . -B build 
cmake --build build/
./build/litefm

Important

Ensure that you set up litefm.log in your ~/.cache/litefm/log/ directory (create if not there)

LiteFM has a very modular logging system and keeps a track of every file/dir control that goes on in a litefm instance

Just run the command mkdir -p $HOME/.cache/litefm/log/ and you can run litefm without a hassle!

Building with Make:

-> Run make in the current directory

-> This should give a ./litefm executable, just run it to enjoy LiteFM!

-> To cleanup, run make clean

make 
./litefm

Building with Meson:

-> Ensure that you have meson and ninja (or ninja-build) installed in your distribution.

meson setup build/
meson compile -C build/
./build/litefm

NOTE: Running sudo ninja install will MOVE the litefm executable to /usr/local/bin directory.

If you DO NOT want this, ignore the last step and simple run ./litefm

In any case, to uninstall (stay in the build dir):

sudo ninja uninstall

-> Run the executable litefm and enjoy!

Debugging

In order check how LiteFM works under the hood and further understand any issues, redundancies or vulnerabilities,

Check out debug to build LiteFM with AddressSanitizer (ASan)

Adding Man Page (Optional):

You can add the man page for LiteFM in your system by the following commands:

[NOTE: You will have to keep updating this man page manually every time a new functionality is introduced.]

sudo cp components/litefm.1 /usr/share/man/man1
cd /usr/share/man/man1/ && sudo gzip litefm.1

Thats it! The man page is ready to be used via man litefm

SECURITY

As this is a file manager that is able to perform some VERY cool and dangerous tasks like deleting any directory recursively, I definitely have tried to set up security measures to avoid any form of code vulnerability or CWE.

Other steps I plan on taking to ensure that you are always in control of the file manager are:

1. A litefm.log and it's functionality has been implemented (src/logging.c) that will log EVERY file/dir control in every litefm instance
2. Possibly set up a trash system so that accidental deletion of any file/dir can be restored [priority/low]
3. Trying to add password protected files [priority/med]

Check out SECURITY for the security policy that this repository follows.

Security Tools that can be used in LiteFM:

-> AddressSanitizer (ASan): Gives an in-depth view of how memory leaks take place, overflows and much more

Note

ASan is DISABLED by default

To enable it you will to undergo a debug build

Check out debug build

FUTURE

This file manager is far from done there are a lot of cool and essential features that are planned:

• Adding a basic file preview for readable files (and stat info for directories)

• Integrating current file tasks to multiple files selection (copy, paste, move)

• GO-TO a particular file or directory through string input (might be tough)

• Color coding for file groups (green - general files, pink - images, red - unextracted archives, orange - audio files) [implementation through struct mostly]

• Bugfixes and massive code refactor

• Improve the build script

• Integration of adding a text editor

• Better handling of dynamically linked files and symbolic links

• Handling resizing of litefm window (maybe through SIGWINCH)

• UPCOMING: Modular Syntax highlighting through yaml.h and Hashtables

• UPCOMING: Adding a privacy guard (using GPG maybe)