filer — a small GTK 3 file manager

A ROX-Filer style file manager in C: one window shows one directory, the whole menu is on the right mouse button, and there is no sidebar, no tabs and no gvfs. It works on plain POSIX paths (opendir/lstat/rename/unlink), so it has no daemons to talk to and nothing to configure.

make          # -> build/filer
make run      # run forcing the Wayland backend
sudo make install
filer ~/Documents

Needs only gtk+-3.0 (>= 3.22) development files, a C compiler and make. Install an icon theme (adwaita-icon-theme) if you want icons.

How it works

• One directory per window. Double-click a folder to enter it, Alt+Up or Backspace to go to the parent, middle-click (or the menu) to open something in a new window. Alt+Left / Alt+Right (or the ← → toolbar buttons, or the thumb buttons on a mouse) step back and forward through where you have been; both go insensitive when there is nowhere left to go.
• Right-click is the menu. With files selected you get Open / Open With, Copy, Cut, Paste Into, Rename, Delete and Properties; on empty space you get New Folder, New File, Paste, Select All, Show Hidden, Details View, Sort By, Open Terminal Here, New Window and the folder's own Properties. The ☰ toolbar button and F10 open the same menu.
• Two views. Large icons, or a details list with size, permissions, owner and modification time (Ctrl+D toggles). Folders always sort first.
• Toolbar: back, forward, parent, home, refresh, new folder, an editable path box, details toggle, menu. That is the whole chrome.
• Live directory watching — a file created or removed by something else shows up on its own (debounced 300 ms), keeping the selection.
• Copy, move and delete run on a worker thread with a progress window that only appears if the job takes longer than half a second, and a Cancel button. Moves inside one filesystem are a plain rename(); across filesystems they fall back to copy-then-delete. Name clashes ask Replace / Keep Both / Skip, with "do this for all". Symlinks are copied as symlinks; permissions and timestamps are preserved.
• Delete is permanent (with a confirmation) — there is no trash, which is what avoids needing gvfs.
• Clipboard and drag & drop use the standard x-special/gnome-copied-files and text/uri-list formats, so copy/paste and dragging work with other file managers and applications. Dragging onto a folder row puts files inside it.
• Properties shows type, size, location, owner, and a 3×3 grid of permission checkboxes that chmods as you click.

Keys

Alt+↑, Backspace	Parent folder	Ctrl+C / Ctrl+X / Ctrl+V	Copy / Cut / Paste
Alt+← / Alt+→	Back / Forward	F2	Rename
Alt+Home	Home	Delete	Delete (asks first)
F5, Ctrl+R	Refresh	Ctrl+Shift+N	New folder
Ctrl+L	Path box	Ctrl+A	Select all
Ctrl+N / Ctrl+W	New / close window	Ctrl+H	Show hidden
Ctrl+D	Details view	Alt+Return	Properties
F4	Terminal here	F10	Menu

Wayland

GTK 3 uses the Wayland backend automatically when WAYLAND_DISPLAY is set; make run sets GDK_BACKEND=wayland to force it. g_set_prgname() in main.c makes the Wayland app_id org.gtk.Filer, matching data/org.gtk.Filer.desktop so the compositor can match icons and window rules. Menus use gtk_menu_popup_at_pointer(), which is the only positioning API that works under Wayland. Clipboard and drag & drop go over wl_data_device through GTK, so no extra code is needed.

Source

File	Lines	Contents
src/window.c	~900	Window, toolbar, both views, menu, actions, DnD, directory reading
src/ops.c	~700	Threaded copy/move/delete, conflict prompt, clipboard
src/props.c	~250	Properties window and permission grid
src/util.c	~230	Icon cache, formatting, small dialogs
src/main.c	~110	GtkApplication, accelerators, command line
src/filer.h	~80	The Filer struct and prototypes

A directory is read synchronously into a GtkListStore (fast enough for local filesystems — /usr/bin is instant) with a GtkTreeModelSort on top that both views share, so switching between icons and details is free. The window struct is freed when the window object is finalised, and background jobs hold a reference to the window plus an alive flag, so closing a window during a copy is safe.

Not included

No trash, no undo, no recursive search, no tabs, no bookmarks, no remote filesystems, no thumbnails, no configuration dialog.