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The RNR File Manager (RNR's Not Ranger)

Deprecated

rnr is deprecated in favour of fcd (https://github.com/bugnano/fcd)

The RNR File Manager (RNR's Not Ranger) is a text based file manager that combines the best features of Midnight Commander and Ranger.

Its main goal is to be the most robust file copier in existence.

Features

Screenshots

ranger-like

mc-like

Video Tutorials

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dHh-7hX6dRY

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=17-K43Z2XcU (Italian)

System requirements

For compressed archive support

Installation and running

# To install or upgrade
pip3 install --user --upgrade rnr

# To run
rnr

CD on exit (bash)

If you're using bash and you want to change directory on exit, you have to add a line like this in your ~/.bashrc:

source ~/.local/share/rnr/rnr.sh

CD on exit (fish)

If you're using fish, then simply copy (or, better, symlink) the file ~/.local/share/rnr/rnr.fish to ~/.config/fish/functions/ (create the directory if it does not exist).

Note that this script requires at least fish version 3.1.0

Fix key combinations in terminal

In order to enable the CTRL-Q and CTRL-S key combinations, put the following line in your ~/.bashrc or ~/.config/fish/config.fish:

stty -ixon

Documentation

The rnr man page can be invoked with the command:

man rnr

Here is a text version of the man page

Robust file copy

File copying looks like a simple operation, but there are many cases where it could go wrong.

To better understand the situation, let me tell you a couple of stories:

You have several big, multi-gigabyte files that you need to copy from one hard drive to another. This operation is very time consuming, so you start the copy process in the evening, and let it run overnight.

The next day, you wake up, and see that the copy process is stuck at 10% and you see a window prompting you what to do, as there already is a file with the same name in the destination directory (or an error has occurred during the copy, and the program is asking you if you want to continue or abort).

Result: you wasted almost the whole night, as the copy process was waiting for your input.

Now imagine instead that you wake up and see that your computer shows an empty desktop because the power went down in the night.

Result: The copy process has been interrupted and you have no idea which files have been copied and which files not.

There must be a better way! - Raymond Hettinger

So rnr addresses these problems in 2 ways:

  1. The copy operation is completely non-interactive, the action to be done in case of conflict is decided before the copy process starts. Once the copy process starts, all the conflicts are handled automatically, and all the errors are skipped. At the end of the process, you will see a report window that shows all the actions taken by the copy engine (for example renaming/overwriting a file, or skipping a file due to an error). The report can be saved to a text file, and analized as required.
  2. Every file operation is logged to a on-disk database, so when the power goes off (and it will...), you will know where the copy process was at, and resume from that.

Now, let's address the elephant in the room: The on-disk database slows down operations considerably in the case of many small files.

While rnr defaults to using a database file, it is in fact optional, and can be disabled by a command line switch, or by the "No DB" button.

Of course, everything said about the file copy is applied to the file move operation as well.

Non-Goals

Note for packagers

If you're packaging rnr for your distribution, consider copying (or symlinking) the rnr.sh file to the /etc/profile.d directory, and the rnr.fish file to the /etc/fish/functions directory, so that rnr automatically changes directory on exit, without needing manual configuration.