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Midnight Commander for Windows
Native Midnight Commander 4.8.33 for Windows/Win32
Windows XP+/32 bit native port of GNU Midnight Commander, based on the 4.8.33 release.
Supports recent Windows 10/11 distributions, both MsTerminal and legacy console, 16 and 256 colour modes are available within all.
Midnight Commander (also known as mc) is a free cross-platform orthodox file manager and a clone of Norton Commander.
Features include the ability work with common archive formats as if they were simply another directory, and to function as an SFTP/FTP client. Midnight Commander also includes an built-in editor/viewer, features include syntax highlighting for many languages, macros, code snippets, simple integration with external tools, automatic indentation, mouse support, clipboard and the ability to work in both ASCII and hex modes.
Midnight Commander supports accessing remote filesystems through several methods, including SSH’s Secure File Transfer Protocol, SFTP. This is in addition to FISH, using either a SSH client or legacy RSH connections. This way you can easily transfer files between servers.
Midnight Commander can also rename groups of files, move files to a different directory at the same time as it renames them. It lets the user specify the original and resulting file names using wildcard characters.
Examples
Main panels.
Internal diff viewer.
Internal editor.
Installation
Recent distributions are now bundled with an installer, the following shall prompt and then check for available upgrades. Note: Automatic checks wont occur at this time; functionality staged for a later release.
mcupdater force
Updating older distribution shall require you download from one of the sites listed below or alternatively winget and then update if requried.
winget install --id=GNU.MidnightCommander -e
To utilise Files transferred over Shell protocol (FISH) over SSH, an ssh client is required, you can either install Win32-OpenSSH or WinXSH. For legacy RSH based connections WinXSH is needed.
Finally the internal editor has built-in spell enabled. To utilise aspell is required, you can optionally install Win32-Aspell.
Documentation
The primary way to learn about midnight-commander is to use the context-sensitive online help available via F1.
Comprehensive manual pages serve as the main source of official documentation. These pages cover topics such as "mc," "mcdiff," "mcedit," and "mcview," which can be accessed through the mchelp utility. This utility presents relevant information on each topic using the internal viewer of Midnight Commander.
mchelp mc
Configuration
Run-time profile
The location of run-time configuration elements will differ across installations, and this can be checked using the --datadir-info option. Additionally, these elements are influenced by the MC_DATADIR environment variable. Further details can be found in mchelp mc.
$ mc --datadir-info
Home directory: C:\Users\user
Profile root directory: C:\Users\user
Temporary directory: C:/Users/user/AppData/Local/Temp/mc-user/mc-user
[System data]
Config directory: C:/Program Files (x86)/Midnight Commander/etc/
Data directory: C:/Program Files (x86)/Midnight Commander/share/
File extension handlers: C:/Program Files (x86)/Midnight Commander/plugin/
VFS plugins and scripts: C:/Program Files (x86)/Midnight Commander/plugin/
extfs.d: C:/Program Files (x86)/Midnight Commander/plugin/extfs.d/
shell: C:/Program Files (x86)/Midnight Commander/plugin/shell/
magic: C:/Program Files (x86)/Midnight Commander/etc/magic
[User data]
Config directory: C:/Users/user/AppData/Roaming/Midnight Commander/
Data directory: C:/Users/user/AppData/Local/Midnight Commander/
skins: C:/Users/user/AppData/Local/Midnight Commander/skins/
extfs.d: C:/Users/user/AppData/Local/Midnight Commander/extfs.d/
shell: C:/Users/user/AppData/Local/Midnight Commander/shell/
mcedit macros: C:/Users/user/AppData/Local/Midnight Commander/mc.macros
mcedit external macros: C:/Users/user/AppData/Local/Midnight Commander/mcedit/macros.d/macro.*
mcedit global-menu: n/a
mcedit local-menu: n/a
mcedit home-menu: C:/Users/user/AppData/Roaming/Midnight Commander/mcedit/menu
Cache directory: C:/Users/user/AppData/Local/Microsoft/Windows/INetCache/Midnight Commander/
Extensions
Midnight Commander is fully extendable, allowing operations bound to file extensions.
Double-clicking on a file will try to execute the command if it is an executable program; and if the extension file has a program specified for the file's extension, the specified program is executed. See EXTENSIONS for a number of suitable examples.
Distributions
Binaries and installers
Midnight Commander:
Aspell:
Source
The project can be built from source, the method dependent on the target host. See INSTALL for details, plus working examples are visible within the GitHub workflows.
https://github.com/adamyg/mcwin32f/blob/master/.github/workflows/build.yml
For actively supported tool-chains, configuration profiles are available.
cd mcwin32
.\support\vc2019config
The following build profile and options shall be available.
-
- Configuration:
-
- PackageName: Midnight Commander WIN32
- Version: 4.8.33
-
- ToolChain: Visual Studio 2019
- Compiler: cl / cl
- CFLAGS: -nologo -MD$(RTSUFFIX) -fp:precise
- CXXFLAGS: -nologo -MD$(RTSUFFIX) -EHsc -fp:precise -Zc:offsetof-
- Release: -O2 -GL -Gy -DNDEBUG
- Debug: -Zi -RTC1 -Od
- LDFLAGS: -nologo -MD$(RTSUFFIX)
-
-
- Virtual File Systems: cpio, extfs, shell, ftp, sfs, sftp, tar (see: config.h)
- Screen library: console
- Mouse support: native
- Subshell support: n/a
- Background operations: n/a
- Internal editor: yes
- Diff viewer: yes
-
Review the options above for accuracy.
Execute to build:
"make release" - build software.
To generate an installer:
"make release package" - build installer.
Optionally after installation:
"make release clean" - remove build tree.
Status:
Please feel free to raise tickets on GitHub when issues are encountered.