Spacefm

[Taco.22]

Well I seem to have got a bee-in-my-bonnet about file managers lately!!  Been trying a number of them on OB.  Pcmanfm is good, but no second pane option.  Same with Thunar.  Nautilus has the option, however it really wants to rule the world!  4Pane which I mentioned here in a previous post has potential with its twin pane option, but needs its hand held all the way.  Then I came across Spacefm.  Now this really looks good.

Spacefm is a fork of Pcmanfm but with a multiple pane option.  It still keeps tabs too - up to four panes and optional tabs could get very complicated!!  It is being actively developed and gained it's new name and an alpha release last month.  Like Pcmanfm it mounts volumes and partitions.  It can also manage the desktop, including icons and background.  Has a comprehensive contextual menu and seems very configurable.

Spacefm is packaged as .deb, and is also available to Gentoo and Arch.  Otherwise it's available as a .tar.zx or an installer.sh, which is what I used.  On OB I needed to add  intltool, libglib2.0_0-devel and libstartup-notification-1-devel.  Otherwise the installation was straight forward.

Homepage is http://spacefm.sourceforge.net/  Manual page is http://spacefm.sourceforge.net/spacefm-manual-en.html  Download page is http://sourceforge.net/projects/spacefm/files/

Just thought it might be worth giving it a test run, remembering that it is still in trial mode.  It combines features from a number of FMs into one neat package.  Oh, and the obligatory screenshot of it on my system, with some of my mods - two panels with tree view and limited list view.

[Archie]

Since the app is still in alpha stage and under heavy development, it cannot be a candidate for inclusion on our repository but I am not one to discount any app with potentials. I will take a look at it, package it and make it available for testing. This way, we are also helping the developer(s) with their development.

Peace and much respect,
Archie

EDIT:
Built and testing. I will post a link after giving it a few spin around the block.

[Taco.22]

Wow, that was quick

I will take a look at it, package it and make it available for testing. This way, we are also helping the developer(s) with their development.

Thanks for that Archie - that would be great.  Could be a win-win for all.

[Archie]

Thanks for that Archie - that would be great.  Could be a win-win for all.

My pleasure, Taco.22. It gave me the opportunity to practice.

spacefm-0.6.1-1_archie_2012.x86_64.rpm:
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/32533806/spacefm-0.6.1-1_archie_2012.x86_64.rpm

spacefm-0.6.1-1_archie_2011.i586.rpm:
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/32533806/spacefm-0.6.1-1_archie_2011.i586.rpm

Just ignore the 2011 suffix on the 32-bit RPMS. I have not updated that environment yet.

[Neal ManBear]

Archie,     
Perhaps you could share those RPMs with the spacefm devs?     

All,     
Standard warnings and policies apply. This is not in our repository.     

[Archie]

Archie,     
Perhaps you could share those RPMs with the spacefm devs?     

All,     
Standard warnings and policies apply. This is not in our repository.     

Sure, Neal. I will contact them.

And let me repeat my initial post:

Since the app is still in alpha stage and under heavy development, it cannot be a candidate for inclusion on our repository.

This is strictly for testing purposes. Any bugs or feature requests should be directed towards the developers.

Doh anything else?

[Taco.22]

I have installed the 32 bit .rpm and so far it is working well.  Lots of configuration to play with.  A good place for info is https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=133657  There is a three page thread with the Spacefm dev. fielding questions.  I made mention of a test pclinuxos .rpm on their home forum, and also asked a question about unmounting external drives.  Currently you need root password to do that - I'm probably missing something obvious!  Yet to hear back, but it has only been a couple of hours! 
I think this one might just have legs.  Onwards with the testing - I'll let you know if I bork something .

[Archie]

I have installed the 32 bit .rpm and so far it is working well.  Lots of configuration to play with.  A good place for info is https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=133657  There is a three page thread with the Spacefm dev. fielding questions.  I made mention of a test pclinuxos .rpm on their home forum, and also asked a question about unmounting external drives.  Currently you need root password to do that - I'm probably missing something obvious!  Yet to hear back, but it has only been a couple of hours! 
I think this one might just have legs.  Onwards with the testing - I'll let you know if I bork something .

The README mentioned something about that I think. It was compiled with hald instead of inotify because there's still something wrong with our inotify. That could be it or maybe not ... if someone who has a better understanding can take a look at the README, maybe we'll have an answer.

Thanks for mentioning the RPM. I just posted a comment on IgnorantGuru's blog site as well.

[Just18]

This looks very good for an alpha.

Installed on 32 bit, no problems so far ....  but little testing really.

That unmount thingy can get annoying ok    It even pops up if I just open and immediately close the app.

[Taco.22]

On another 'puter I installed from the tar.xz and used the "--disable-inotify" option with ./configure.  This required installing "libgamin-1_0-devel" - gamin was already installed.  On launching Spacefm and mounting then unmounting a usb stick, I got this in terminal -

** (spacefm:14096): WARNING **: No root settings found in /etc/spacefm/  Setting a root editor in Preferences should remove this warning on startup.   Otherwise commands run as root may present a security risk.
Automount: /usr/bin/udisks --mount /dev/sdc1 --mount-options noexec,nosuid,noatime,flush
Mounted /org/freedesktop/UDisks/devices/sdc1 at /media/6DC7-1021_
Auto Open Tab for /dev/sdc1 in /media/6DC7-1021_
TASK_COMMAND=/usr/bin/udisks --unmount /dev/sdc1
SPAWN=/bin/bash -c /tmp/spacefm.tmp/7695f13d-exec-tmp.sh
    pid = 14139
child finished  pid=14139 exit_status=0

In the README it says -

NOTE: If you don't want to use the inotify kernel support and instead
    want fam or gamin to detect directory changes, add to configure:
        --disable-inotify

I'll go have a poke around and see what I come up with.

[melodie]

Thanks to all. I'll test it when it will be in the testing repo and report at the testing list if any problem arises. I'll also report at the testing list if I find it to work without a glitch ! ^^

Taco.22 : nautilus does not "want" to rule the world. It is built to manage the desktop and icons. I told you the switch "--no-desktop" makes it work like a normal file manager and nothing more. All is needed is to edit a desktop file (and put it in the relevant part of your home to avoid it overwritten when an update will occur). The only trouble I find with it is it is slow to start the first time when in a new session, even when I do a prelink on it.

Regards,
Mélodie

[IgnorantGuru]

Hi, I'm the developer of spacefm.  I replied to archie's msg but I just wanted to clarify a few of the build options so you can get this working as you want on PCLinuxOS.

spacefm uses the kernel inotify API directly so it should work okay, but I don't know what pclinuxos/inotify issues he was refering to.  Unless it's not detecting directory changes I wouldn't disable it.  Otherwise as you found you can disable it and use gamin instead.  But gamin is less good in general.  (afaik gamin also uses inotify btw, at least in some modes)  The inotify vs gamin support has no relationship to the udisks/hal or device management issues. 

By default, spacefm builds with udisks support, which is recommended.  The alternative is to build with --enable-hal.  This will disable udisks support and will seriously limit the functions of the device manager - you'll miss out on a lot of what spacefm can do with devices.  You can tell if you have a udisks build by right-clicking on the devices list.  If you see a Settings submenu, it's udisks.  Otherwise it's a hal build.  If you're being prompted for a root password to mount a device, that's a hal indicator as well.

I recommended to Archie that PCLinuxOS provide both spacefm and space-hal packages, because there are quite a few users still using hal.  Regardless, you can also make use of spacefm's self-extracting installer to create your own build with a minimum of hassle.

Thanks for testing.

[melodie]

I recommended to Archie that PCLinuxOS provide both spacefm and space-hal packages, because there are quite a few users still using hal.  Regardless, you can also make use of spacefm's self-extracting installer to create your own build with a minimum of hassle.

Thanks for testing.

Hi IgnorantGuru,

Thanks for your visit and explanations !

Just for your information, HAL in PCLinuxOS is not yet an option, as many important programs in the distro are still relying on it. We do use udisks too. But much less packages are tied to it. In my install, removing udisks would not pull away many programs, for the time being, whereas removing HAL would remove many important parts including many programs I need for everyday use.

Regards,
Mélodie

[Archie]

Code:

To use HAL support, you must have developing packages of dbus-glib-1 (>=0.31), hal(>=0.5.0), and hal-storage, or you can use --disable-hal to disable HAL support.

Our repository do not have the package hal-storage so --enable-hal is currently not an option.

I've looked for a src.rpm at pbone but can only find an rpm. It looks like we might have to add the hal-storage rpm to --enable-hal.

I will investigate this a bit more ... need help from you , of course.

Thanks for dropping by IgnorantGuru. We appreciate it.

Peace and much respect,
Archie

[Neal ManBear]

IgnorantGuru,     
One question - is there a way to use inotify without the need to provide the root password for mounting/umounting?