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SpaceFM Development Branches

Branch Description
alpha The alpha branch is used for alpha testing the very latest work on SpaceFM. It may be somewhat unstable. This branch doesn't always exist (if no alpha testing is in progress), so build scripts should fall back to the 'next' branch if 'alpha' is missing. See alpha issues to see what's being tested.
next The next branch is the rolling release version of SpaceFM. It is beta-test quality, usually as stable as the numbered releases, and includes the latest features and bugfixes. This version is also usually available via Debian/Ubuntu experimental daily builds and the Arch Linux AUR. You can see what's being done in next by checking the milestone of the upcoming version number, or see the ChangeLog.
master The master branch contains the latest stable numbered release of SpaceFM (eg 1.0.4), also available via Github Releases. This branch has undergone more testing yet may be more out of date. To see changes in each release, see the release notes below and ChangeLog.

You can easily build any version or branch of SpaceFM using the Net Installer, or see README.



1.0.6 released
2018-Mar-04

SpaceFM 1.0.6 is a maintenance release which corrects a number of issues. This release is planned to be the last release in the 1.0 series. As described further below, feature changes in alpha will shortly be merged into next, due for 1.1.0 release.

1.0.6 includes the following changes:

    Rename dlg canonicalize Copy Target/Link Target target when possible
    [installer] fix mktemp template and error handling for busybox #629
    [GTK2] fix black background dir load regression 888a7735 #578 #627
    [GTK3.20] fix theme parse warnings re close btn css #636
    [GTK2] iconview no longer responds to theme change #627
    Fix compilation failure due to glibc include changes #678
    update copyright, email in README, release, about-dlg.ui
    [installer] use newer package names libx11-dev libudev1; failsafe
    user manual minor updates #681
    remove from ptk-clipboard.c:  #include  (was for realpath)
    default Devices|Root|Check fsck command add -r for repair
    File|Open URL add example mtp://
    release script add msgfmt po check
    add sftp to ssh protocol handler default whitelist (allows sftp://) #700
    settings.c:1930: (style) Clarify expression with parentheses #659
    fix segfault in ptk/ptk-dir-tree.c:430  #698
    fix newly imported file handlers appear in Plugins menu #688
    fix 1.0.2 708f0988 regression: Dbl-click to enter dir selects file #702
    fix segfault when dragging folder or file on desktop #654 [Teklad]
    [desktop] fix GTK3 icon movement, reliably get mouse state Teklad/spacefm#1
    load icon using icon name in theme if removed suffix fails #647 [Teklad]
    [desktop] Paint root window when there is no wallpaper #404 [Teklad]
    fix source file permissions [Teklad]
    fixed/added translations to pl.po [grimi via Teklad] Teklad/spacefm#5
    [GTK3.22] fix segfault dragging files to dir tree #649 #670 [Teklad]
    fix drag & drop segfaults #636 [BwackNinja]
    fix segfault on drag to reorder bookmarks
    fix davfs is not mounted #648
    fix fuse default protocol handler not added due to false positive test
    fix bookmark pane and toolbar two-finger right-click
    fix file list new bookmark with topmost bookmark selected
    fix mktemp in mtp handler not busybox compatible #624
For reference, see also Issues closed in 1.0.6 and Commits In 1.0.6.

Special thanks to OmegaPhil, Teklad, and BwackNinja for contributions to this release.

NOTE: Dir loading changes in the alpha branch are NOT included in the 1.0.6 release. Those features in alpha are planned to be merged into the next branch shortly, due for 1.1.0 release. Use of next or alpha is recommended to help test these features.

Translators should note that new translation changes on Transifex are applied to the alpha branch, so your latest translation updates may not appear in the 1.0.6 release.




1.0.5 released
2016-Jan-20

SpaceFM 1.0.5 includes the following changes:

  • Cached thumbnails which are smaller than the size set in Preferences are now re-created.

  • The Desktop Manager now shows video thumbnails on the desktop.

  • Icon size option 384x384 has been added to Preferences (max is still 512x512).

  • lxqt-sudo and lxsu have been added to the list of su frontends in Preferences.

  • Support has been added for qterminal in list of terminals in Preferences.

  • Actions|Paste As Target now pastes the canonicalized final target when possible. (Prior versions pasted the immediate target of the link, which may have been another link, so this change resolves all the links to find the actual file.)

  • When opening files with an associated MIME application, the .desktop file's StartupNotify=No key is now obeyed.

  • user-dirs.dirs support has been added to obtain the templates dir (or $XDG_TEMPLATES_DIR).

  • Devices|Settings|Auto-Mount|Mount Dirs now accepts some XDG variables explicitly, as shown in the dialog. Also, the specified directory (with parents) will be created on demand.

  • For filesystems listed in the Devices|Settings|Change Detection blacklist, SpaceFM will now detect new files added to the dir, only ignorning changes to existing files. (Deletion of files are also still detected.)

  • configure.ac sets G_LOG_DOMAIN for clarity in debugging output.

  • A problem where right-clicking on the Dir Tree and selecting Paste pasted into the wrong dir has been corrected.

  • Use of the Menu key in Dir Tree now changes dir and acts on correct dir.

  • The udevil iso unmount device handler has a new whitelist/blacklist to prevent it running to unmount CDs (caused a problem unmounting CDs for udisks users without udevil installed). Unless you have modified the handler, upgrading to 1.0.5 will automatically update the handler's whitelist/blacklist.

  • A problem where SpaceFM attempted to read from character device files to determine their MIME type has been corrected.

  • A rare crash during reload of the bookmarks pane has been corrected.

  • Filesystem find loops are prevented to avoid a hang in new file/folder dialog loading of templates.

  • A potential crash on GTK icon theme reload has been corrected.

  • Several minor memory leaks have been corrected.

  • Inoperative key shortcuts set in the Open|In Panel context menu have been corrected.

NOTE: Dir loading changes in the alpha branch are NOT included in the 1.0.5 release. Those features in alpha are being given more time to mature so they don't affect the stability of the release version. Use of alpha is recommended to help test these features, which are very stable for most users.

Translators should note that new translation changes on Transifex are applied to the alpha branch, release of which has been delayed, so your latest translation updates may not appear in the 1.0.5 release. (If you want your changes added to release sooner, you are welcome to merge the next and alpha po files for your language, and submit a pull request against next. But alpha may merge into the next release anyway, so this is probably unnecessary.)




1.0.4 released
2015-Oct-17

As previously announced, this release of SpaceFM includes streamlining of source distribution methods, as well as some additions to the build system. SpaceFM 1.0.4 includes the following changes:

  • SpaceFM has a new interactive net installer which replaces the self-extracting installer packages (and the 'install' script in the source). This new installer can download, build and install any version, branch or commit of SpaceFM with custom configure options. Basic instructions can be found on the homepage. The installer may be downloaded and used alone, and is also installed to /usr/bin/spacefm-installer.

  • The location of SpaceFM source files may be different. README has been streamlined and rewritten, including information on the new installer and new download locations, and a new USING GIT section has been added, which details how to download versions, check sigs, etc. The homepage and user's manual have also been updated. Recommendations to enable kernel polling have been made less prominent in docs, as this is already enabled now on most distros.

  • Signed source archives and Debian packages are no longer distributed with releases. The pkg branch on Github (previously used to distribute source and Debian packages) has been deleted. Instead, release source archives may be downloaded from Github Releases. The rolling release version will continue to be available as SpaceFM's 'next' branch on Github.

  • Distributed files have been removed from Sourceforge. However, Sourceforge continues to host the SpaceFM Forum for general questions and discussion.

  • SpaceFM packages have been removed from IgnorantGuru's PPA, as these packages are no longer being created as part of the release process. SpaceFM is included in official Debian repos. For users of older Debian distros who previously used the PPA's self-building packages, the new net installer is recommended instead, which works similarly. Or, see more options on the SpaceFM Debian Wiki.

  • Developers and forks only - A new script for automating releases called 'release' has been added. This is used by SpaceFM developers to automate releases. Also, a RELEASE section was added to README which briefly describes the new 'release' script.

  • New authentication instructions are provided in README. git already has built-in integrity protection. Downloading the rolling release version from Github has not changed. In addition, all release tags within the git repo have always been GPG-signed with IgnorantGuru's key (0x01937621), and this will continue. If you previously depended on GPG-signed release files, the way to check GPG signatures now is within git. For example, to download and check the signature on the sources for version 1.0.4:
            git clone --depth 1 -b 1.0.4 git://github.com/IgnorantGuru/spacefm.git spacefm
            cd spacefm
            git tag -v 1.0.4
    Note: The net installer uses wget or curl to download a tarball from Github. However, if wget and curl are not available, it will use git, and will automatically check the tag signature. You can refer to that script, or modify it to use git by default if you want to check signatures automatically. Note that git cannot download specific commits via spacefm-installer, only branches and tags, while wget or curl will also download by commit.

  • A new --sysconfdir configure option has been added. If your system has an alternate location for /etc, you can use this option to set it like this:
            ./configure --sysconfdir=/etc
    Note that if you change --sysconfdir, SpaceFM will look in the specified dir for fstab, mtab, udevil.conf, and other files normally located in /etc.

  • SpaceFM's build system now installs /etc/spacefm/spacefm.conf (if it is not already present). (Previously, this file was created on demand by the executable.) Packages should of course be configured to not overwrite a user-modified copy of this file.

  • New terminal_su and graphical_su options have been added to /etc/spacefm/spacefm.conf. This is intended to replace and provide more flexibility than the old --with-preferable-sudo configure option. Note that if graphical_su is set, it will override the --with-preferable-sudo setting.

  • Maximum icon/thumbnail size has been increased from 256x256 to 512x512, since many icon collections now include this size. WARNING: Using large thumbnail sizes in directories containing many files may use very large amounts of RAM > 10 GB. Be sure your system memory can handle the size you select.

  • New event for tab change dir, evt_tab_chdir, has been added.

  • The show-menu socket method has been replaced with activate, and may be used for all custom item types, not just menus. (For backwards compatibility, 'show-menu' is equivalent to 'activate'.)

  • In SpaceFM Dialog, a new non-visible --click element has been added to run a command when a widget (or an item in a list) is clicked or focused.

  • Debian users note: Debian's libffmpegthumbnailer4 package has been renamed libffmpegthumbnailer4v5. Debian packaging has been updated to reflect the new name, as have SpaceFM's provided Debian build files.

  • Menu key and Shift+F10 with side pane focus now shows context menu.

  • Design Menu is now shown with Menu key in addition to F2 when a menu item is highlighted.

  • The directory tree side pane can now be more easily navigated with keyboard (arrows to move, Enter to enter a dir).

  • A double-click on a directory tree side pane row now expands/collapses the row.

  • Directory tree side pane context menu|New|Tab Here now opens selected dir.

  • The new location for GTK3 bookmarks (~/.config/gtk-3.0/bookmarks) is now preferred by the bookmarks import function over the old location (~/.gtk-bookmarks).

  • Flashing caused by continuous updating of video thumbnails while a download/copy is in progress has been corrected. In some cases, you may need to select Refresh after downloading a video file to see the thumbnail. Some further improvements to this behavior are planned.

  • A problem in SpaceFM Dialog which caused some internal variable names to always be set to %v has been corrected. (To test for this bug, see comment.)

  • A problem which caused unreadable text and other wrong colors with a dark variant of GTK3 themes has been corrected. (Affected GTK > ~3.12)

  • A problem building SpaceFM 1.0.2 and later for non-GlibC libraries due to the use of malloc_trim() has been corrected.

  • A problem building SpaceFM 1.0.3 with HAL or older GTK libraries has been corrected.

  • A new Italian (it), Turkish (tr), Ukrainian (uk) and other translations have been updated.

PLEASE HELP TEST the new deep directory size, backgrounded dir loading, and other features coming to SpaceFM. You can alpha test this version by using SpaceFM's 'alpha' branch. (Note that the alpha branch may not always exist, eg when no alpha testing is underway, so build scripts should be written to fall back to the 'next' branch if 'alpha' is missing.)





Build System Changes
2015-Sep-04

PACKAGERS and others: Please note that SpaceFM's build system has changed. These changes are now in the next branch and will be included in the upcoming 1.0.4 release. Please see details.




Release Changes
2015-Aug-29

SpaceFM's release methods are being streamlined, which affects where source packages may be downloaded from, what packages will be available, and the contents of assorted documentation and websites. Also, SpaceFM has a new interactive net installer which can download and install any version or branch of SpaceFM with a single command.

To use the new net installer (beta test), see the updated homepage instructions. This installer replaces the old self-extracting installer and self-building packages, which are no longer being produced after version 1.0.3.

IgnorantGuru's PPA will no longer include spacefm or udevil packages (they will be removed shortly). If the official Debian packages don't work for you or you want custom build options, the new net installer is recommended, or see the SpaceFM Debian Wiki for other options (if you find other solutions, feel free to add them to the wiki).

Sourceforge will no longer host copies of SpaceFM's source archives, as Sourceforge is under new ownership and there have been some questionable malware practices with other projects. Plus, those files are no longer being created. However, SpaceFM's forum will still be hosted on Sourceforge for now.

The new location for downloading source archives is Github Releases. Signed source archives and other packages are no longer being created. (If you want to check a GPG signature, see the new README.)

The README file has been rewritten, and contains some new sections, including on how to use git to get SpaceFM.

That's a summary of the changes underway, and udevil will be seeing similar changes in a bit. For more details on the above changes, or to participate in testing, please see Issue #571.

Why? This project is several years old, and is suffering from a bit of sprawl in terms of sites managed, packages created, etc. In order to spend less time on overhead like that, the release process is being streamlined, and most of the work is now being done within git. This is also more feasible now that SpaceFM and udevil are more widely known and are available in most distros' repos, meaning they can pick up the packaging work and I can focus on development.




1.0.3 released
2015-Aug-26

SpaceFM 1.0.3 includes the following changes:

  • Handlers of all types may now be exported and imported using the new Options button in any handler configuration dialog, or via the new right-click menu of the handlers list. Handlers exported as plugins can now be shared on the Plugins Wiki. Also, the Archive Defaults menu is now also available via the new Options button in the archive handlers configuration dialog.

  • The icon chooser dialog added in 1.0.2 for GTK2 is now also available for GTK3 builds. Also, the icon chooser now opens to the All Icons category by default, and a double-click on an icon closes the dialog. (Thanks to OmegaPhil for his work on the icon chooser).

  • New setting Devices|Settings|Auto-Mount|Mount Dirs has been added to optionally control where fuse and similar mounts are placed.

  • Shortcut keycodes from non-latin keyboard layouts are now converted to a latin equivalent, so that key shortcuts will work more consistently across keyboard layouts. In the Set Key dialog, if you press a non-latin key, it will transpose it and also show the original keycode in square brackets. While key shortcuts set in 1.0.2 and prior should work as-is in 1.0.3, key shortcuts set in 1.0.3 and later may not work when downgrading. If a key shortcut doesn't work, just set it again.

  • The default gphoto handler has been renamed as ptp, and ptp:// may be used in URLs.

  • A problem causing some protocol handlers to fail when used with lxterminal, urxvtc, konsole or gnome-terminal has been corrected.

  • A problem which caused commands and handlers run in LilyTerm to sometimes fail has been corrected. SpaceFM now adds the --separate option when running LilyTerm.

  • A problem which caused GZip and XZ archive handlers (and any custom archive handlers that used the %O variable) to create archives in the current directory rather than the user-selected directory has been corrected. (Note: this problem only affected plain GZip and XZ, not tar.gz nor tar.xz.)

  • A new translation for Latgalian (ltg) has been added, and several translations have been updated.

  • [GTK 3.14] A crash caused by an empty rubberband selection in Detailed view when using GTK ~3.14 and later has been corrected.

  • configure.ac now defines G_DISABLE_ASSERT to disable g_assert statements, which caused SpaceFM to terminate prematurely in some rare cases.

  • spacefm.desktop has been updated for protocol handling.





1.0.2 released
2015-Jun-02

SpaceFM 1.0.2 includes the following changes:

  • Redesigned Toolbars:

    • Design Mode can now be used directly on toolbars by right-clicking on a toolbar item. The toolbar config menus are no longer used.

    • Built-in toolbar items may now be reordered and added in any position via the new Design Menu's Add submenu.

    • Custom items may be cut/copied/pasted to/from the booksmarks pane, toolbars, and menus.

    • Each panel now has its own independent toolbars.

    • Tooltips are now optionally shown for toolbar items.

    • Three new built-in toolbar items have been added: Show Hidden to toggle showing hidden files, Large Icons to toggle the View setting, and Show Thumbnails to toggle the thumbnails setting from Preferences.

    • Note that the keyboard can no longer be used on the toolbar (eg focus and select). Also, due to new methods used on the toolbar, theme effects and animation of toolbar buttons are not shown.

    • When you upgrade to 1.0.2, your old toolbars will be converted to the new config. Any custom items you added to the toolbar will be included, and will be shown whether Show was enabled for them or not. (The new toolbars have no Show setting.) Also, any custom items you added in the toolbar config menus themselves will be moved to a Lost+Found submenu in the main Tools menu.

    • When downgrading, any custom toolbar items will vanish from view. When you upgrade again, they will reappear.

    • For more details, please see the updated Toolbars section of the manual.

  • GTK2 ONLY: An icon chooser dialog has been added for selecting icons, accessed via the Choose buttons on dialogs which accept an icon. [Hopefully a GTK3 version of the icon chooser will be available soon.] Special thanks to OmegaPhil for his work importing the exo icon chooser.

  • Use of mimeapps.list has been updated to conform more closely to the current Freedesktop MIME spec. This means that SpaceFM will now update ~/.config/mimeapps.list rather than ~/.local/share/applications/mimeapps.list. The latter will still be read (given lower priority than the newer location). Also, the new Default Applications section in mimeapps.list is now used and updated. When upgrading, some of your default and associated applications in SpaceFM may change from those shown in prior versions. You can always set a new default application for a MIME type to override system defaults. For more details, please see the updated MIME section of the manual. Special thanks to Vladimir Kudrya for research and testing of the new MIME specs.

  • Icons loaded from an absolute image file path should now be correctly resized when appearing in menus, toolbars, and bookmarks.

  • A Run As Task option has been added to File Handlers. (In versions 1.0.0-1.0.1, Run As Task was a default behavior.)

  • The current panel's View menu has been added to the main menu bar's View menu for alternate access.

  • A View|Style|Thumbnails (global) setting has been added to the panel's View menu (allowing a key shortcut to be set). This toggles the thumbnails setting in Preferences, which applies to all panels and windows.

  • A show_thumbnails socket property has been added.

  • Archive handlers now take precedence over file handlers. See order of precedence when opening files.

  • Several hangs on SpaceFM startup introduced in 1.0.0 have been corrected. These were triggered by missing or access-denied dirs specified on the command line.

  • Several memory leaks were corrected. Special thanks to OmegaPhil for help with memory analysis and fixes.

  • A problem which caused the default ftp handler to ignore a custom port in URLs has been corrected. To use the new handler, you may need to select the ftp handler in Protocol Handlers and press the Defaults button.

  • A problem (found in some GTK themes) which caused a right-click on Bookmarks to open the bookmark instead of showing the menu has been corrected.

  • An old bug which caused a right-click on the Detailed file list view to unselect files should now be corrected.

  • A problem which caused some zombie processes to be left behind (eg when running custom commands in lxterminal) has been corrected.

  • A problem introduced in 1.0.0 which caused the mouse scrollwheel on the desktop to not work correctly with Openbox's (and other WM?) desktop switching has been corrected.

  • Additional minor issues were addressed, as detailed in the ChangeLog:

    • fix Compact view sometimes fails to scroll to selected file #502
    • fix forgets compress handler after extract to #517
    • no re-import bookmarks when up-down-upgrade from < 1.0.1
    • fix Item Prop context opposite of Disable is Show instead of Enable
    • get mime type icon from .local XML file before guess
    • fix icon/compact view left-click doesn't unselect other files
    • allow escape of underscore in item names #522
    • force rebuild of folder_view for font change in exo_icon_view
    • always update status bar Reading msg
    • item prop dlg text view scroll add shadow #532
    • [desktop] fix linefeeds in desktop item names #543

  • Several translations were updated.






1.0.1 released
2015-May-04

SpaceFM 1.0.1 includes an extended bookmarks system, fully integrating them with the menu system.

SpaceFM 1.0.1 includes the following changes:

  • Extended Booksmarks:

    • Design Mode can now be used in the Bookmarks menu to add any kind of custom menu item, including bookmarks, applications, custom commands, submenus, and separators.

    • Bookmarks can now run applications and commands, which allow them to open in specific panels, change view settings via socket commands, and other customised behavior.

    • Bookmarks can now open multiple targets (tab groups)

    • The bookmarks pane can now descend into submenus.

    • The new Follow Dir option, similar to the old behavior, will select the bookmark matching the current directory, and will also find ones in submenus. This means that if submenus contain similar bookmarks (such as a 'System' submenu used for system maintenance), entering one of the directories will change the listed bookmarks to the submenu containing similar items. Thus the bookmarks pane now follows a directory context.

    • Each bookmark, other custom menu item, or submenu in the Bookmarks menu and side pane can now have a unique individual icon and shortcut key assigned (set via Properties).

    • Bookmarks can be copied to other menus, exported to plugin files, and imported. An option to import GTK's bookmarks is available.

    • When upgrading to this version, your existing bookmarks will be automatically imported into the new system.

    • For more details and to learn the tricks, see the brief new Bookmarks section of the manual.

  • A new default protocol handler for http:// and webdav:// will automatically be added to the top of the protocol handlers list when upgrading from version 1.0.0. This handler will usually open http URLs in your web browser, but if udevil has been configured to allow davfs mounts (davfs2 installation required), it will mount them. Using a webdav:// URL instead of http will force a mount attempt. See the top of the handler script for options which can be set to control the behavior.

  • The View|Refresh function has been rewritten to work more smoothly, and the cursor position will be restored after a refresh.

  • The status bar now shows a "Reading..." message while the directory is still loading.

  • The archive functions in the Open context menu will now be shown at the top of the menu if they are the default action for opening archives.

  • The MIME Menu now prompts before automatically creating local copies of desktop and xml files.

  • A crash introduced in 1.0.0, triggered by leaving a directory before all thumbnails were loaded (eg when pressing the Back or Up toolbar items), has been corrected.

  • A problem introduced in 1.0.0 which caused --enable-hal build errors has been corrected.

Note: If you're building or packaging SpaceFM with libffmpegthumbnailer, their code site recently moved from Google Code to GitHub, and version 2.0.10 was released. Also, the developer was helpful in removing the ffmpeg logging messages that appeared in stderr - this change should be in their next release.




1.0.0 released
2015-Apr-13

SpaceFM 1.0.0 includes a new configuration window for creating and changing handlers for devices, protocols, archive files, and regular files. The device and protocol handlers add potential support for many more filesystems, the archive handlers allow virtually any archive types to be handled in unique ways, and file handlers allow one to bypass MIME associations. This release also includes video thumbnail support via ffmpeg, and a transparent background mode for the desktop manager. Special thanks to OmegaPhil for his work on the new handler configuration window and new archive handling, BwackNinja for his transparent background feature, Justin Jacobs for code contributed toward video thumbnail support, and Vladimir Kudrya for contributing default protocol handlers and testing.

Your existing configuration will be imported into the new one. The only settings which should be lost are if you added any custom options to archive commands. These will need to be re-entered in the new handler commands.

SpaceFM 1.0.0 includes the following changes:

  • New handlers for devices, protocols, archive files, and regular files. This replaces the old Mount Command and Unmount command. For details see the new Handlers section of the user's manual. SpaceFM includes handlers for ftp, ssh, mtp, gphoto (mounting PTP cameras), ifuse, smb (via udevil), and fusesmb. Please consider contributing handlers for other protocols you use (keep default handlers as simple and short as possible).

  • Thumbnails of video files are now created by ffmpegthumbnailer. This adds a dependency on the libffmpegthumbnailer-dev package for building SpaceFM. Or you can use new configure option --disable-video-thumbnails to skip this dependency.

  • New wallpaper mode 'Transparent' sets the desktop background transparent. For desktop transparency to work, you need to be running a compositing window manager or separate compositor like compton or xcompmgr. You can then also use nitrogen or xwinwrap, etc. to set wallpaper on the background.

  • Preferences now support small and large icon sizes up to 256x256 (with a 48x48 limit applied in side panes).

  • Detailed and Compact list views now include a (file list)|View|Style|Large Icons setting. If enabled, the large icon size (set in Preferences) is used with these list styles. If the Large Icons option is off, the small icon size is used as before. A shortcut key may also be assigned to turn Large Icons off and on.

  • Devices (eg /dev/sdd1) and URLs may now be passed to SpaceFM on the command line and entered in the path bar. Also, bookmarks may now target a device (eg /dev/sr0).

  • The Devices list's Show|Display Name may now include %n to insert the device number (eg 0:31) into the displayed label.

  • Existing configure option --disable-desktop-integration (which removes support for SpaceFM's desktop manager) now also hides the Desktop tab in Preferences.

  • New configure option --with-bash-path has been added to support bash located elsewhere (normally /bin/bash). Use of the option is NOT recommended because it may make plugins non-portable to other systems. Instead, consider simply adding a link to bash at /bin/bash. If you do use --with-bash-path, be sure it points to genuine bash v4, as other shells are NOT interchangeable. SpaceFM uses features requiring bash, and other shells will cause breakage to some features.

  • New mount and unmount socket task types allow scripts to mount and unmount devices and protocols via SpaceFM's configured handlers.

  • A change detection blacklist has been added in Devices|Settings. Listed here are filesystems which should NOT be monitored for changes. This setting only affects non-block devices (such as nfs or fuse), and is usually used to prevent SpaceFM becoming unresponsive with network filesystems. Loading of thumbnails will also be disabled on these filesystems.

  • Subdir mounts are now detected. Also, filesystems not normally shown by SpaceFM can now be shown by adding a protocol handler for the filesystem type (via mtab_fs=).

  • Translations have been updated for: cs de ja pl pt_BR ru sv tr - thanks to translators! Also, SpaceFM's Transifex server has been restored.

  • Menu item File|Save Session (which was not needed) has been replaced with Open URL.

  • A change in glib which causes a 'Attempt to unlock mutex that was not locked' error on startup with some combinations of glib and GTK has been corrected.

  • When using GTK2, the next file in the list is now selected after a file is renamed or deleted. (This is default behavior for GTK3.)

  • A change in 0.9.4 which sought to address desktop dialogs not popping on top of other windows has been reverted because it caused dialogs to appear on the wrong desktop. (This problem probably needs to be corrected in those window managers which do not pop dialogs of the root window to the top.)

  • A problem with command line option --show-pref=N not showing the Advanced tab has been corrected.

  • A problem which caused an 'Invalid cross-device link' error when renaming aufs directories has been corrected - thanks to OmegaPhil.

  • A problem where evt_device was not executed if the Devices pane was unshown in the current session has been corrected.

  • GLib-CRITICAL source ID not found warnings (which appeared due to a change in glib) have been corrected (on close of File Properties and in the thumbnail loader).

  • Several minor GUI issues have been corrected.

Did you know that SpaceFM is a systemd-free file manager which also supports eudev as a replacement for udev? When used with udevil or another mount solution, SpaceFM can be used completely without systemd, consolekit, policykit, dbus, udisks, gvfs and fuse (although it can coexist with and use any of these).




0.9.4 released
2014-Mar-30

udevil is now available in Debian's official testing and unstable repos. Thanks to Mateusz Łukasik for his work maintaining udevil and SpaceFM packaging on Debian, as well as his Ubuntu PPAs. For older Debian versions, you can still use the build-from-source packages in IgnorantGuru's PPA. Please see the updated Debian wiki page for details.

GTK3 USERS: GTK 3.10 removes all menu and button icons, and hides key mnemonics in menus and dialogs by default. To restore icons, you can currently add the lines gtk-menu-images = true and gtk-button-images = true to ~/.config/gtk-3.0/settings.ini This setting is now deprecated and likely to be removed permanently in future GTK3 releases, so you may want to give GTK developers feedback on this change. Key mnemonics can now be seen only by pressing Alt and hovering the mouse over an item with a mnemonic. (GNOME's configuration editor may also have some settings for these options.)

Keith Hedger's Mount SMB/FTP/SSHFS/WebDAV Share GUI plugin has been updated.

Viking777 has added Chroot plugins.

IgnorantGuru has created a SpaceTV plugin for adding resumable video playback to SpaceFM via the new mpv video player.

Special thanks to OmegaPhil and VSIDO developer VastOne for their continuing support work, answering questions on the SpaceFM IRC channel, #spacefm on irc.freenode.net.

runwiththedolphin has produced a new screencast showcasing SpaceFM 0.9 on antiX 13.1 Stable. A very positive review of SpaceFM, it’s a nice walkthrough that shows some of the oft-overlooked features, new destkop and file browser features, and shows some tips on using plugins and networks. See more screencasts on the SpaceFM Wiki.


SpaceFM 0.9.4 includes the following minor changes:

  • 'Hover selects' options have been added to the General and Desktop tabs of the View|Preferences dialog to allow users to enable single-click opening while disabling automatic select on hover.

  • You can now simply middle-click in the Path Bar to replace the Path Bar's contents and seek to a new location. Or hold Shift or Ctrl for normal middle-click insertion. (As always, you can also middle-click on a panel's status bar to copy the selected file names or paths - choose which by right-clicking on the status bar and setting the Middle Click option there.)

  • Dialogs opened from the SpaceFM desktop should now pop to the top of other windows in all window managers. Such dialogs are no longer parented by the root window, as some managers handled this poorly.

  • SpaceFM now passes file paths (%f/%F) rather than URIs when replacing %u/%U substitution variables in .desktop files' Exec keys. This change is also freedesktop spec compliant, and was made because some common .desktop files erroneously use %U instead of %F, and because most other file managers use this alternate form of substitution.

  • When task error handling is set to 'continue', the task dialog is no longer brought to the top of others windows on every error, merely the first error, and at the end of the task.

  • When renaming files/folders on the desktop with Arrange By set to Custom, the location of the item is now preserved.

  • SpaceFM now works with gnome-terminal 3.10, which no longer accepts its old option --disable-factory. Note that this means gnome-terminal can no longer be used with the combination options Run As Task plus Run In Terminal (rare usage). If you use an older version of gnome-terminal, you can add the --disable-factory back by adding it in View|Preferences|Advanced|Terminal.

  • SpaceFM Dialog now removes blank lines when reading a file into drop, combo, list, and mlist elements.

  • SpaceFM Dialog now removes linefeeds when using command 'set' to change the value of an input or input-large element.

  • SpaceFM Dialog now does not save element values to a specified @FILE when the Cancel button is pressed or the dialog is merely closed, and the user's manual has been updated with this information.

  • inotify error messages presented on stderr now show more useful information.

  • A problem which caused panel sizes to not be saved when the window was immediately maximized after installing SpaceFM (starting with a fresh config) has been corrected.

  • A problem where the icon entry in the item properties dialog of checkbox-style toolbar items was disabled has been corrected.

  • A problem when pressing Cancel in the font dialog opened from Preferences|Desktop which caused the font to be set to Default has been corrected.

  • A configuration problem which caused some keypresses to not work correctly (due to panel_sliders-key) in 0.9.2-0.9.3 has been corrected.

  • When installing a plugin, the item's Use-as-opener for setting is now automatically turned off, and the manual has been updated to note this.

  • An overlapping display problem in Preferences|Desktop in some GTK2 themes has been corrected.

  • configure now includes default make options -Wno-deprecated-declarations -Wformat -Wformat-security -Wreturn-type -Wunused-value. Please open an issue if this change breaks building on any compilers. (They can be removed if needed by editing configure.ac and running autogen.sh or autoreconf.)

  • Translations have been updated: de ru sv Help translate.






0.9.3 released
2014-Jan-17

See the release announcement for a general update on SpaceFM development.

This maintenance release includes the following changes:

  • Task Manager columns are no longer set to expand as the window or other columns change size. This is to correct a problem which caused the columns to be hard to adjust during i/o load on some systems. This change should make the columns easier to adjust, but they will be less smart in terms of autosizing when the window size is changed.

  • The application chooser now includes tooltips for each listed application showing relevant lines from the .desktop file. Also, sorting is case-insensitive and duplication of listed apps has been corrected.

  • SpaceFM now looks in /usr/share/applications subdirs for .desktop files when starting apps, helping to prevent 'command not found' errors.

  • A new method (udev rule) has been added to the kernel polling instructions. (Because udisks2 also requires kernel polling, this should be already enabled on many systems in the near future.)

  • A memory leak triggered by drawing a rectangle (rubberbanding) on the desktop has been corrected.

  • A problem which caused SpaceFM Dialog to return windowsize=1x1 due to changes in GTK3.8+ has been corrected.

  • A problem which caused the position of the sliders between panels to not be restored correctly on startup when the SpaceFM window was maximized has been corrected.

  • SpaceFM now tests to ensure that /bin/bash is installed on startup. Note that SpaceFM has a required dependency on bash v4. Other shells are not equivalent. bash doesn't need to be the default login shell, but it must be installed.

  • Multiple translations have been updated - thanks to translators for their continuing work!






0.9.2 released
2013-Dec-06

This maintenance release includes the following changes:

  • The saving of column widths and window size when the SpaceFM window is maximized or fullscreen has changed, as detailed in the updated user's manual.

  • su-to-root has been added to the supported su front-ends.

  • Edit Command or Edit Script is now available in the design menu of custom menu items of type Command. Design mode shortcut F4 now opens a command script in editor.

  • The task manager's height is now absolute, rather than being relative to the size of the window. This means the task manager height will remain consistent even if the window changes size while it is hidden, or between sessions.

  • A "~/" prefix designating the current user's home directory is now permitted in bookmarks and custom items of type Bookmark.

  • When the current folder is renamed, its tab is now automatically closed.

  • A problem in detailed list view which caused the wrong automatic drag action to be used when dropping onto the last row in the list has been corrected.

  • A problem in icon and compact views which caused the item under the cursor to be selected when entering a directory by double-clicking has been corrected.

  • A problem which caused SpaceFM to treat a folder named *.iso as an ISO file has been corrected.

  • A problem which caused a custom command's output dialog to not autoscroll on first show under some conditions has been corrected.

IgnorantGuru has provided new plugin Paste Into (aka Paste Into Folder) to paste clipboard files into a single selected folder, or else into the current folder. It is intended to replace or supplement SpaceFM's built-in Paste command.

Some of SpaceFM's official screenshots have been updated to reflect recent changes to Design Mode.




0.9.1 released
2013-Nov-06

SpaceFM 0.9.1 introduces a new memory system for multiple panel configurations and includes fixes for several minor problems.

  • A new panel memory system remembers how panels are configured when shown alone or with other combinations of panels.

    Upgrade Notice: When upgrading, an effort is made to extend your old panel config into the new memory, yet some initial adjustment may be necessary. The best way to use SpaceFM's memory for panel configurations is to select the panels you want visible, then arrange each panel as you want it to appear. Hide or show side panes and adjust their sizes, choose file list columns and adjust their widths, choose which toolbars are visible, etc. Each time you select a different combination of panels, you may need to do some further configuration until SpaceFM gets to know all the combinations you use and how you like them arranged.

    Downgrade Notice: Panel configurations for 0.9.1 and later, versus 0.9.0 and earlier, are stored separately, so when downgrading you will not see the same panel configurations, but your settings for each version will remain intact.

  • A problem introduced in version 0.9.0 which caused some custom icons (bookmark icon, tab icon, devices icons) to not be saved has been corrected. If you lost custom icon settings due to this problem, you will need to reconfigure them.

  • A problem which caused task popup dialogs to always open at their minimum size when used with GTK 3.8 and later has been corrected.

  • An old problem which caused SpaceFM to fail to detect an empty optical drive as optical has been corrected. (This problem caused the wrong device icon to appear for empty optical drives.)

  • The default icons for devices have been changed to provide more information on the mounted state of the device. These icons are limited to stock GTK icons by default, but may be changed by right-clicking on the Devices pane and selecting an icon in Settings|Icon.

  • Due to a change in the sakura terminal which replaced argument -e with -x, SpaceFM now uses -x to send commands to this terminal. If you're using an older version of sakura you may need to upgrade for compatibility with SpaceFM 0.9.1.

  • lilyterm has been added as a recognized terminal.

  • A problem building SpaceFM 0.9.0 on GTK < 2.24 has been corrected.

  • When opening a new root window, SpaceFM now sets HOME=/root to ensure root's settings are saved in root's home. (When upgrading on some systems, root's window configuration will appear to be new.)

  • A problem (introduced in version 0.9.0?) which broke Export from the desktop menu's design menu has been corrected.

  • The default speed and time remaining columns shown in the task manager now use current speed and estimate, rather than average. (You can change this default by selecting visible columns in the task manager.)

  • The evt_win_move event is now emitted at most five times per second to reduce resource usage.

A new page has been added to the wiki for Screenshots & Screencasts. Please update this page with additional links.

SpaceFM contributor OmegaPhil has added new page Guidelines For Distributing Modifications to the wiki.

For Debian/Ubuntu users interested in testing SpaceFM's next branch (which is generally quite stable and includes new features), Mateusz Łukasik has been updating his SpaceFM PPA with +git builds in addition to release versions.




0.9.0 released
2013-Oct-22

SpaceFM 0.9.0 includes powerful features for those who like to create their own desktop environment, and some significant improvements to Design Mode, which is used to easily customize SpaceFM's menus and toolbars.

    IMPORTANT UPGRADE INFORMATION: Due to Design Mode changes, making a backup of your SpaceFM session file prior to upgrading is recommended. Note: After upgrading and running SpaceFM 0.9.0, if you then run a prior version of SpaceFM (downgrade), any built-in menu item names or icons which you have customized will revert to their defaults. This does not affect custom menu items.

  • SpaceFM's session file now only stores the names and icons of menu items which you have customized. This makes the session file significantly smaller/faster, accommodates changes to defaults, and also allows you to see updated translations. The cost of this change is the above warning regarding downgrading.

  • The Desktop Manager has the following new features:

    • Moveable Icons: New setting 'Arrange Icons|Custom' allows for arbitrary placement of icons. There are some unusual aspects to how this works. Icons can be dropped on top of other icons, and the icons beneath will shift out of the way. The desktop is essentially a list of icons which is folded into columns. When moving a group of icons, note that their relative geometry is not preserved - they will be packed into the list.

    • Design Mode can now be used in all parts of the desktop's right-click menu, allowing you to add custom menu items in those menus, and to construct custom application and tool menus, commands, etc. Parts of the desktop menu are now synchronized with the file browser menu.

    • New item Open|Desktop Folder has been added to the desktop's right-click menu.

    • New item New|Desktop Application has been added for adding an application shortcut on the desktop.

    • A left-click or right-click on the desktop or on an unselected item unselects all.

    • Drag action (move or copy) on the desktop is automatic.

    • Sorting on the desktop is now natural.

    • Removing a device via the Devices menu now shows progress dialog.

    • A problem centering wallpaper larger than the screen has been corrected.

    • A problem where the desktop was sometimes shifted with the use of a panel has been corrected.

    • New settings have been added to the Desktop tab of the View|Preferences dialog:

      • A font button to use a custom font for desktop icons

      • Margin and Padding values to adjust placement of icons

      • 'Single click opens', now separate from the file browser setting

      • 'Open folders using associated MIME app'. If checked, your MIME app is used instead of opening a SpaceFM file manager.

  • SpaceFM's design menu (right-click on a menu item) has been redesigned.

  • A new Menu Item Properties Dialog has been added for setting a custom menu item's type, name, icon, command, and options, replacing the old design menu. Commands and scripts may also now be edited in this dialog or opened in your editor.

  • Custom menu items (formerly called "custom commands") may now be of type Bookmark. Custom Bookmark menu items can be used to bookmark one or more folders, files, or network URLs (they will open in multiple tabs - aka a tab group). NOTE: Custom item Bookmarks are not related to the bookmarks in the Bookmarks menu and side pane. They may only be added to other menus. (This is due to planned changes ahead.)

  • Custom menu items may also be of type Application (add an application shortcut to any menu), Command (for custom commands), Separator, Submenu.

  • Plugins may now be imported directly into a menu using the design menu's new New|Import menu.

  • A custom menu item may now be set as a default opener for files or devices using the new Use as opener for: setting on the Context tab of the Item Properties Dialog. If the context enables the item, a file or device will be opened using the custom command or application instead of the associated MIME app or Mount program.

  • The verb list of the Context tab of the Item Properties Dialog now includes "match" and "doesn't match" for tests including wildcards.

  • Find-As-You-Type search has changed: If the search key is one or two characters, the search finds names that start with it. If two characters or more, it is a substring search. You may also include a caret (^) to force the former.

  • If Terminal is set to x-terminal-emulator, the link will be resolved, allowing the correct terminal command line arguments.

  • Dragging and dropping selected files to the current directory now copies rather than renames.

  • Mouse buttons 6 & 7, previously set to back/forward, have been reverted. (These are used in GTK for horizontal scroll.)

  • Mount and Unmount menu items for devices (side pane and menu) are now context-sensitive (eg. if unmounted, Unmount will be grayed).

  • A left-click in the Devices Menu (on the desktop and in the FM) activates Open.

  • A middle-click in the Devices menu activates Remove/Eject.

  • Mount and Unmount have been added to the Devices menu's design menu (right-click on a device in the menu).

  • The file manager's Devices menu now includes and obeys option Settings|New Tab.

  • The Rename/New File dialog's Browse dialog now allows you to select File, Parent, or Path to determine what part of the selected path is inserted.

  • Open|Default used on a folder now opens the folder in the associated MIME app (rather than SpaceFM necessarily).

  • Missing file errors produced by the run-task socket command are now shown in a task popup for the user rather than on stdout.

  • HAL build: Unmounted devices may now be ejected in addition to mounted devices.

  • HAL build: Optical devices may now be unmounted in addition to ejected.

  • HAL build: A very old problem causing duplicate devices to be listed has been corrected.

  • The session file is now updated more often if you change directories or open/close tabs, allowing better recovery in case of crash or halt.

  • When executing .desktop files, SpaceFM now obeys Path and Terminal keys.

  • When SpaceFM executes an Exec= line in a .desktop file, the line may contain bash commands (is treated as a bash line).

  • If a .desktop file does not contain an Exec field code, separate commands are issued for each selected file.

  • Default and associated MIME applications can now be set for MIME type application/octet-stream (unknown). (eg. you can set them to open with your hex editor)

  • A problem when merging folders (moving a folder onto a folder which exists) which sometimes caused files to be unnecessarily copied instead of just moved has been corrected, improving efficiency.

  • Compliance to Design Mode's Popup Task setting has been corrected.

  • SpaceFM should now build successfully on MIPS (and other?) architectures.

  • The user's manual has been updated to reflect the above changes, and the Rename and New File/Folder dialogs are now documented.

  • The distributed tarball and associated packages have been moved to a new packages branch in Github and out of the master branch.

  • New translations have been added - thanks to all translators! You too can help translate.

SpaceFM is now included in official Debian repositories for unstable and testing - much thanks to Mateusz Łukasik and others who were part of this effort. For other Debian or the HAL build, IgnorantGuru's PPA may be used (any Debian/Ubuntu version lenny to sid)..

Mateusz Łukasik also now provides an Ubuntu PPA for SpaceFM and udevil, in addition to his Lubuntu PPA.

SpaceFM's and udevil's shared official forum has moved back to SourceForge. Due to a crash on the old server, posts between March and October are lost.

The issue tracker (bugs, requests) is now sorted into Milestones to provide a view of current issue priorities.




0.8.7 released
2013-Mar-17
  • IMPORTANT: Sandfox users who have SpaceFM installed should read the new advisory on using Sandfox with SpaceFM. Those desiring greater security should consider moving the tmp directory as advised there. This has become recommended due to the new run-task socket method described below, as well as other filesystem information obtainable via the socket. Upgrading to SpaceFM 0.8.7 is also recommended, as this version includes mechanisms to deter socket use from within sandboxes (chroot jails).

  • SpaceFM has been added to the cloud-based Transifex translation server, making it much easier for translators (anyone) to help translate using their online editor. See the new wiki page for translator instructions.

    Much thanks to Delix for helping to setup the server, and to numerous translators who have updated translations there already, including complete or almost complete Portuguese (Brazil), Russian, Spanish, and Serbian translations, and updated yet incomplete French, Dutch, Swedish, German, Italian, Czech, Polish, and Hungarian translations (see complete list). See Help|About|Credits|Translated By for the translators responsible for your language.

  • The desktop manager (--desktop) includes the following changes in 0.8.7:

    • The right-click menu on the desktop has been redesigned, now providing a limited version of the file manager's menu. Design Mode may now be used in most parts of this menu to rename items, change keys, and add custom commands or application shortcuts (commands of type Custom). Key shortcuts on this menu will be active when the desktop has focus.

    • A Bookmarks submenu has been added to the desktop menu for quick access to bookmarks set in the file manager.

    • A limited Devices submenu has been added to the desktop menu for quick handling of devices.

    • New|Desktop Application has been added to the desktop menu for adding an application shortcut or custom command to the desktop.

    • Symlinks on the desktop are now shown with an arrow indicator in the icon.

    • The menu key may now be used on the desktop to show the desktop menu (even if option View|Preferences|Desktop|Show WM's Menu is checked).

    • The desktop window now sets property WM_WINDOW_ROLE to "desktop_manager" to help window managers and custom rules differentiate between SpaceFM windows.

  • A limited Devices menu has been added to the main menu bar for quick handling of devices, particularly useful when the Devices side pane is not visible.

  • The Path Bar's Breadcrumbs feature has been reverted to using only Ctrl+Click, rather than an unmodified click (as was briefly the case in version 0.8.6 only). Using an unmodified click for this function made editing in the Path Bar difficult with some panel configurations. If you would like an option to also have Breadcrumbs active with an unmodified click, you can add a comment on this and it will be considered. See Path Bar click behavior in SpaceFM 0.8.6 for an example of how this would work.

  • Handling of multiple workspaces (aka "desktops") has been improved when opening a folder, reusing any already-open SpaceFM window on the current workspace, and bringing the correct window to focus. (In some circumstances, prior versions opened folders in a SpaceFM window on the wrong workspace, etc.)

  • .desktop filenames which contain a hyphen, such as those used by KDE, or those located in subdirectories of /usr/share/applications, should now be found by SpaceFM. (This is somewhat beyond the very poorly maintained freedesktop.org specs, but has become somewhat common.)

  • File Properties (right-click on file and select Properties|Info) now allows you to edit the Modified and Accessed times of one or more files/folders.

  • File Properties now shows the target of a link.

  • Mouse buttons 6 & 7 may now be used as 'back' and 'forward' in the file browser (in addition to 4 & 5 and 8 & 9). These buttons are common on Logitech scroll wheels.

  • New socket properties tab_count (how many tabs a panel contains) and new_tab (open a new tab) have been added.

  • New socket properties have been added to control sorting of the file list, including: sort_by, sort_ascend, sort_natural, sort_case, sort_hidden_first, and sort_first. For example:
        spacefm -s set sort_by size
        spacefm -s set sort_by name
        spacefm -s set sort_ascend false
        spacefm -s set sort_natural true
        spacefm -s set sort_first folders
    
  • A new run-task socket method has been added, allowing custom commands to start new tasks in SpaceFM, listing them in the task manager, and using the normal overwrite query dialog for copy, etc. For example, to start a copy task in SpaceFM, prompting before overwriting files and showing progress:
        spacefm -s run-task copy /etc/fstab /etc/hosts /tmp
  • The socket properties edit_file and run_in_terminal are now deprecated (yet still usable) in favor of the new run-task method. For example, to open a file in the user's configured root editor:
        spacefm -s run-task edit --as-root /etc/fstab
    Or to run a command in the user's configured terminal:
        spacefm -s run-task cmd --terminal 'date; read'
  • Window property WM_WINDOW_ROLE is now set to an appropriate value for many windows created by SpaceFM, such as "file_manager", "desktop_manager", "text_dialog", "rename_dialog", "task_dialog", etc. This should help window managers treat their positioning differently, and also allow custom rules for where and how windows are opened (such as in Openbox's rc.xml). See xprop.

  • When a custom tmp directory is specified in /etc/spacefm/spacefm.conf, this dir is now used for SpaceFM's socket (previously was hard-coded to /tmp).

  • WebDAV shares (http://) are now mounted in a terminal window to allow for password entry.

  • Double-click on an app in the Application Chooser dialog now activates the item.

  • A problem in SpaceFM's directory change monitor which caused changes in a directory to fail to be detected under some rare circumstances has been corrected (details).

  • When built with deprecated configure option --disable-inotify: SpaceFM is now stabilized in the event the FAM/gamin server is stopped while SpaceFM is running, such that it won't crash and will print warnings to stderr (but directory change detection will of course stop working).

  • Compile errors generated by make option -Werror=format-security, and other format-related warnings have been cleared.

  • A problem in the File Search window which caused the function of option Content|Case Sensitive to be inverted has been corrected.

  • A problem where a key shortcut set to menu item New|Link had no effect has been corrected.


Also, SpaceFM with udevil is now the default file manager in ArchBang, a lightweight Arch Linux system combined with the Openbox window manager.

Mateusz Łukasik's Lubuntu PPA includes SpaceFM and udevil packages. Mateusz is also the new official Debian packager for SpaceFM and udevil and is working on including official packages in Debian's repos (not yet available, except in mentors spacefm and udevil). Monitor the SpaceFM Debian wiki for updates.

NOTE: For those building SpaceFM from source using the instructions in the README, Github recently changed the way they package the source when downloading a tarball. Because they now ignore .gitattributes, the download is over 75 MB and contains all old and new SpaceFM versions and packages. The instructions will still work, but the download is unnecessarily large. I have submitted a bug report to Github and will consider necessary changes based on their response. If you simply want the current release of SpaceFM (master branch), you can download the official tarball here (SF's mirrors may take awhile to update immediately after a release).




0.8.6 released
2013-Feb-13
    SpaceFM's Path Bar has been redesigned with the following added and changed features:

    • By default, the Path Bar will auto seek, which means that as you type in the Path Bar, the current directory will change automatically, and any partial filename typed will select the first matching directory or file found in the file list. You can turn off auto seek by right-clicking on the Path Bar and unchecking option Auto Seek. In this case, you will need to press the Enter key to change to the directory entered.

    • The Breadcrumbs feature now works with a single left-click. The Breadcrumbs feature allows you to click on a portion of the path in the Path Bar to trim the path back. If Auto Seek is enabled (the default), this will also immediately change to the new path. Or, use Ctrl+Click to force the directory change. For example, if the path is currently /usr/share/spacefm/plugins and you click on the name 'share', the path will change to /usr/share. This provides a convenient way to go up to a specific directory.

    • Tab completion when entering a path in the Path Bar now performs more like a typical terminal emulator, including a slash at the end of the path and completing partial names. The popup completion is now sorted alphabetically, and a problem which caused two columns to appear in the GTK3 version of the completion has been corrected.

    • The command history is now shown in a popup completion. Up/Down arrows keys may now select previous commands only if the completion popup is shown. The command history is now instance-wide, which means commands entered in one window, panel, or tab, will be shown in the history of all windows, panels, and tabs for the duration of the instance.

    • There is now an instance-wide history for URLs entered in the Path Bar.

    • Single-quoted paths (such as those produced by Edit|Copy Path) are now evaluated when pasted into the Path Bar.

    • When the Path Bar has focus, it will steal the following keypresses (even if they are set as key shortcuts): visible characters without a modifier key, Home, Shift+Home, End, Shift+End, Delete, Tab, Backspace, Left, Shift+Left, Right, Shift+Right. (see special editing keys)

    • The user's manual Path Bar section has been updated.

  • When used with udevil 0.4.0 or later, http:// and https:// URLs may be entered in SpaceFM's path bar to mount a WebDAV-enabled site via davfs2. This is used to edit site contents or for file sharing via services such as box.com. (SpaceFM >=0.7.8 and udevil >=0.4.0 required.)

  • The keyboard alone may now be used to set and unset key shortcuts in the Design Mode Set Key dialog. To use only the keyboard, press a key combination and then press Enter to click the Set button. Or, to click Unset, press the Escape key twice. To cancel, simply close the dialog (usually Alt-F4).

  • The user's manual has been updated to include a section detailing Find-As-You-Type Search.

  • The debian/ directory in the source tree has been moved to distros/debian/ to remove conflicts with official Debian packaging (which is reportedly underway). Please see the updated README file for instructions on creating a deb package.

  • Provided build-from-source debian packages now ensure the build is optimized with CFLAGS=-O2 for a faster smaller executable.

  • When changing the directory of the current tab, devices or bookmarks will be selected or unselected based on whether they match the new current directory.

  • A crash in SpaceFM built with GTK < 2.24 (affected Debian Stable, CentOS) when creating a new file or folder has been corrected.

  • Sorting by Type or Owner columns in Detailed view is now case-insensitive.

  • The New|File/Folder/Link menu items are now enabled even if there is no write access in the current directory (because the new file dialog allows As Root performance).

  • When items are selected, the status bar now shows selected item count / total visible item count.

  • A problem which made it impossible to unset a key shortcut assigned to a plugin has been corrected.

  • Mouse back/forward buttons (buttons 4 & 5 or 8 & 9) now work almost anywhere in the window, rather than only over the file list.

  • Custom submenus which are empty due to all of their children being hidden based on context are now hidden automatically.

  • For new installs (no existing config directory), the default view style is now Compact, and the 'Default' toolbar icon has been moved to the left of the Path Bar.

  • The user's manual example custom protocol handler script has been updated to use the run_in_terminal socket command to run programs in the user's terminal.

  • Configure option --with-gtk2 has been added. This forces a GTK2-only build, producing an error if GTK2 is not installed. This option is also provided for forward compatibility - if GTK3 eventually becomes the default build, including --with-gtk2 in packaging files now will remove the need for changes later. Note that if neither --with-gtk2 nor --with-gtk3 is supplied, SpaceFM currently builds with GTK2 if available, or GTK3 if GTK2 is unavailable.

  • ftp:// udevil mounts are now conducted in a terminal to allow entry of a password as needed.

  • Distro-specific information for SpaceFM and udevil has been moved to a new wiki page, allowing packagers and users to keep information for their distro up-to-date. Thanks for helping to maintain this page.

  • A new wiki page on Using Conky With SpaceFM Desktop Manager has been added. If you have any suggestions to add there, please do.

  • Thanks to Vladimir Kudrya for an updated Russian translation.


Also, SpaceFM with udevil is now the default file manager in the latest release of ArchPup (13.2) and in the new Debian sid-based distro VSIDO. See the new Distros wiki page for more information.




0.8.5 released
2013-Jan-14

This mostly-maintainance release includes the following changes:

  • SpaceFM's GTK3 build option has left beta testing. By default, SpaceFM builds with GTK2. See the updated README file for GTK3 build instructions. A spacefm-gtk3 deb package is also now provided in the release packages and in the author's PPA.

    If you are packaging SpaceFM, due to the unfinished and changing nature of GTK3 please consider providing both spacefm-gtk2 and spacefm-gtk3 packages to provide users with flexibility.

    IMPORTANT: Many GTK3 themes are broken due to frequent breakage in GTK3's theme support. Thus it is very important to use a GTK3 theme which is compatible with your current version of GTK. Run spacefm in a terminal to see any theme-related warnings. When in doubt, compare behavior with the Adwaita default GNOME theme. SpaceFM also recommends Clearlooks-Phenix and DarkMint as generally well-maintained themes. [UPDATE 2013-Feb-02: There have been some reports of memory leaks related to Clearlooks-Phenix.]

  • Two new options have been added to View|Tasks|Popups: Above Others to keep SpaceFM task dialogs above all other windows, and All Workspaces (aka sticky) to show task dialogs on all workspaces. How these perform will depend on the window manager in use - they are hints only. These are disabled by default.

  • Basic navigation and activation keys (arrows, Delete, F2 to rename, and Space/Enter to activate item) are now enabled on the SpaceFM desktop.

  • When creating a new file, folder or link from the SpaceFM desktop, the newer file creation dialog is now used.

  • A left-click in a toolbar config menu now causes the design menu to be shown.

  • SpaceFM Dialog's --progress element has been improved with more versatile handling of percentages and text in the bar, and now accepts auto-pulse to return to that mode. See the updated user's manual for details.

  • A problem with SpaceFM Desktop Manager which caused some dialogs to appear on the workspace containing the SpaceFM browser window rather than the current workspace has been corrected.

  • A bug which caused some clicks in the Open context menu to be lost when using some themes or mouse types has been corrected (actually a workaround was provided for the bug in gtk which caused this).

  • A problem with mktemp on Ubuntu which caused the provided deb and PPA packages to not install has been corrected.

  • Other minor corrections and adjustments - see ChangeLog.

Also, SpaceFM with udevil is slated to be the new default file manager in the upcoming release of SliTaz (SpaceFM is currently included in SliTaz repos).




0.8.4 released
2012-Dec-21

SpaceFM 0.8.4, mostly a maintainance release, includes the following changes:

  • dbus and libdbus runtime dependencies in SpaceFM have been changed to optional in the README and provided debian packages. While most users will have dbus installed already, SpaceFM should also be usable on systems without it. If you do notice functional changes without dbus, please report them so they can be documented. Note that the HAL build of SpaceFM still has build and runtime dependency on dbus, libdbus, and libdbus-glib. See README for updated details.

  • A bug introduced in 0.8.3 which caused a double-click on a folder in double-click mode to register a single click inside the new folder, losing history, has been corrected.

  • A bug which caused some clicks in context menus to be lost when using some themes or mouse types has been corrected (actually a workaround was provided for the bug in gtk which caused this).

  • A problem with SpaceFM Dialog commands sent to a command pipe too quickly has been corrected.

  • A problem with icons not being aligned properly in some cases has been corrected.

  • A socket task property popup_handler has been added to allow plugins to replace the default task popup dialog with a custom one.

  • Socket task properties edit_file and run_in_terminal have been added to allow a plugin to open a file using the user's configured editor, and to run a command in the user's configured terminal.

  • The NAME argument to internal SpaceFM Dialog commands 'show' and 'focus' is now optional to allow them to be used to present the dialog (bring the dialog to the top of other windows).

  • SpaceFM Dialog element --viewer now accepts an optional [SAVEFILE] argument to save the contents of the viewer (particularly useful if the viewer is reading from a pipe).

  • SpaceFM Dialog now sends stdout of external commands to /dev/null, to prevent the output being evaluated.

  • The user's manual has been updated for the above changes.

  • Some minor widget display issues with gtk3 beta build have been corrected.
For a full list of changes see ChangeLog.




0.8.3 released
2012-Nov-24
  • SpaceFM can now be built for either GTK2 (the default) or GTK3 (beta test build). Many thanks to BwackNinja for his continuing work on the GTK3 port and other areas of SpaceFM! See the updated README file for GTK3 build instructions.

    IMPORTANT: The GTK3 build is currently provided for testing purposes. SpaceFM runs very well in GTK3 with a functional theme, but many themes are broken due to frequent breakage in GTK3's theme support. Thus it is very important to use a GTK3 theme which is compatible with your current version of GTK. Run spacefm in a terminal to see any theme-related warnings. When in doubt, compare behavior with the Adwaita default GNOME theme. SpaceFM also recommends Clearlooks-Phenix and DarkMint as generally well-maintained themes. [UPDATE 2013-Feb-02: There have been some reports of memory leaks related to Clearlooks-Phenix.]

    Plugin authors should note that their plugins may now be running on GTK3 as well as GTK2. Most SpaceFM Dialog functions work comparably in GTK3, but there are minor differences. If you encounter a major difference or breakage in SpaceFM Dialog on GTK3, please report it.

  • SpaceFM 0.8.3 introduces the new socket commands, which allow custom commands and plugins to easily interact with the GUI. For example, socket commands can be used to record or change the size of a SpaceFM window; show or hide panels or side panes; resize panels, panes, and columns; select files in a given window, panel, or tab; place text or files on the clipboard; read text or files from the clipboard; place text in a panel's status bar; update the progress bar and other information displayed about running tasks, and much more. The user's manual has been updated with a new Sockets section.

  • A new Events submenu has been added to the main menu bar's View menu. This menu allows custom event handlers to be set. This allows you to write command lines or scripts which are run when certain events occur in SpaceFM windows. In some cases these handlers can replace the default behavior. For example, you might make a custom response for middle-clicking on the path bar. details

  • SpaceFM Dialog features have been extended:

    • You can now place custom text or no text (no percentage) on a progress bar

    • %(command) arguments in commands now accept a bash command line

    • --label elements now accept option --wrap or --nowrap to control whether text is wrapped. If neither option is specified, the GTK2 default is to always wrap, and the GTK3 default is to wrap unless the label is packed into an --hbox element.

    • Option --compact or --expand may now be included for any element to force how the element is packed into the current box, overriding the default behavior.

    • A --window-close element has been added, which specifies a command to be run when the user attempts to close the window, allowing for an 'Are you sure?' message or other conditional closure.

    • Option [REVERSE] has been added to the internal close command to optionally inhibit its function.

  • An fm_edit function has been added to the exported bash variables available for use in commands. fm_edit FILE opens a file using the user's configured editor.

  • configure option --disable-pixmaps is now the default, meaning by default icons will be installed to share/icons/ rather than share/pixmaps/. If you prefer the latter, add configure option --enable-pixmaps when building. Since --disable-pixmaps is now the default, be sure to run these additional commands after make install:
        sudo gtk-update-icon-cache -q -t -f /usr/local/share/icons/hicolor
        sudo gtk-update-icon-cache -q -t -f /usr/local/share/icons/Faenza

  • SpaceFM command line option --version has been added to display version and build information. Plugins can use this option to test for a particular SpaceFM version.

  • Ctrl+rubberband (drag cursor) may now be used to add to a selection on the desktop

  • Spacing of items in icon and compact view modes has been reduced for more efficient use of space

  • Thumnbails are now automatically oriented based on EXIF data.

  • A wallpaper zoom mode has been added to View|Preferences|Desktop.

  • A setting for alternate display of file sizes using SI decimal (1K = 1000 bytes) has been restored to View|Preferences|Interface. This option, disabled by default, will cause all file and device sizes and copy speeds displayed in SpaceFM to be decimal rather than binary. (Some file managers use this irregular method for measuring file sizes, so this option is provided for compatibility.)

  • The Rubberband Select option formerly in View|Preferences|Interface has been moved to the file list's context menu in View|Style. This option can be disabled only when view style is set to Detailed.

  • A secondary sort has been added to icons on the desktop (applies to SpaceFM's Desktop Manager). For example, when sorting icons by size, if two have the same size, they will be presented in alphabetical order based on their names. This corrects a problem with the displayed order changing when the desktop is clicked.

  • When using the CONFIG_BLK_DEV_RAM kernel config option, multiple empty /dev/ramN entries were shown in the Devices list when Show|Internal Drives was enabled. These are now hidden by default if unmounted. If you prefer they be displayed, you can add one or more to Show|Volumes.

  • The Highlights and History sections of the user's manual have been updated.

  • Centering of icon labels has been corrected

  • A problem introduced in 0.8.1-0.8.2 which made it impossible to click and drag a selection of multiple files in icon and compact view modes has been corrected

  • A problem which caused make to fail on gtk 2.18 has been corrected

  • SpaceFM's Russian translation has been updated - thanks to Vladimir Kudrya and new translator Vladimir Lomov

  • Pibang Linux for the Raspberry Pi, built on the armhf architecture, now includes SpaceFM, and SpaceFM may be selected as the default file manager during installation.




GTK3 Alpha Testing Moved To Next
2012-Nov-02

Alpha testing in the gtk3 branch of SpaceFM has been merged into the next branch. This means gtk3 support is planned to be available in the next release as an optional beta test build.

Because the gtk3 branch no longer exists, if you want to alpha test gtk3 before the next release, please use these instructions:

1) Install spacefm build dependencies (see README), adding libgtk-3-0 and libgtk-3-bin.

2) Run these commands:

    # Download & Extract
    mkdir /tmp/spacefm-build && cd /tmp/spacefm-build
    wget -O spacefm.tar.gz https://github.com/IgnorantGuru/spacefm/tarball/next
    tar xzf spacefm.tar.gz
    cd IgnorantGuru-spacefm-*

    # Build & Install
    ./configure --with-gtk3
    make -s
    sudo make install
    sudo update-mime-database /usr/local/share/mime > /dev/null
    sudo update-desktop-database -q
    sudo gtk-update-icon-cache -q -t -f /usr/local/share/icons/hicolor
    sudo gtk-update-icon-cache -q -t -f /usr/local/share/icons/Faenza

    # Remove Temporary Files
    cd / && rm -rf /tmp/spacefm-build

Or if using Arch Linux, you can install the gtk3 build using AUR spacefm-gtk3.

Be sure to use a gtk3 theme that is compatible with your version of gtk3. If spacefm is run in a terminal, you should see no theme warnings. Beware - broken themes can cause malfunctions in the GUI, and many gtk3 themes are broken. Also note that some themes will make spacefm run more slowly. Clearlooks-Phenix is a well-maintained theme for gtk 3.4 (although on some systems Clearlooks themes in general tend to run more slowly). For a dark theme, DarkMint runs fast and is well-maintained for gtk 3.4. [UPDATE 2013-Feb-02: There have been some reports of memory leaks related to Clearlooks-Phenix.]




0.8.2 released and GTK3 Alpha Testing
2012-Oct-25

This maintenance release is primarily to correct problems building with hal. 0.8.2 corrects several issues present in 0.8.1:

  • Problems building with the --enable-hal configure option have been corrected.

  • The way information is displayed in the overwrite dialog and task popups has been modified.

  • An old bug which sometimes produced an erroneous 'destination is contained in source' error has been corrected.

  • An old bug which prevented cutting a directory and pasting it, overwriting a directory with the same name, has been corrected (#174)

  • The French and Russian translations have been updated
SpaceFM GTK3 Now Available For Alpha Testing
BwackNinja's current work porting SpaceFM to GTK3 has gone through an initial review and has been added to the alpha test gtk3 branch of SpaceFM. This branch can be built for either GTK2 (the default) or for GTK3 using configure option --with-gtk3 (GTK3 will be used automatically if GTK2 is not installed). Distros should not package this branch except for testing.

When built with GTK2, this branch should run exactly like 0.8.2. When built with GTK3, this branch may have some remaining GUI issues, but the file operations should not be affected. The GTK3 build can use some thorough testing.

To build from the gtk3 branch, please follow the instructions in the gtk3 README these updated instructions. When reporting issues, please be sure to specify your build method and branch.

It's also possible to easily build a binary debian package for spacefm-gtk3 - see the CREATE DEB PACKAGE section in the next README (until the next release, you must change "master" to "next" in the wget command).

For Arch Linux, you can install the gtk3 build using AUR spacefm-gtk3.

Thanks for testing! The more feedback we receive on GTK3, the faster it can evolve and move toward inclusion in the stable release version.




0.8.1 released
2012-Oct-21

UPDATE 2012-10-23:: The deprecated hal build (configure --enable-hal) is broken in 0.8.1 (and prior). Until 0.8.2 is released, hal users can use this modified tarball to correct the hal issues in 0.8.1. spacefm-hal in the PPA has been temporarily reverted to 0.7.5. Although hal support is deprecated (no longer actively developed), all SpaceFM releases should still build with hal, so users should continue to report issues if it doesn't.

Changes in 0.8.1:

  • SpaceFM 0.8.1 includes a new task manager queue designed to improve performance. Some tasks on the same drives will no longer run simultaneously, and you can manually pause, resume, and queue tasks, including custom commands. The task manager, including the new queueing abilities, is now fully documented in the User's Manual - Tasks section. This is recommended reading so you can get the most out of the new features. For example, did you know that you can now simply left-click on the Status column to pause, resume, or queue a task? It's also possible to disable queuing of new tasks, which means SpaceFM will work like before, unless you manually queue a task.

  • SpaceFM now builds on older versions of GTK2 down to 2.18, including Debian stable ("squeeze"). Thanks to BwackNinja, a new contributor to SpaceFM, who completed most of this portability work as part of his preparation for porting SpaceFM to gtk3, which is well under way (see below). In addition, SpaceFM no longer has a hard dependency on libgdk-pixbuf2.0-0 (because in earlier versions of gtk, this is not a separate library). Also, libstartup-notification is now optional. When building SpaceFM, if it is present it will be used; if not, ignored. You can also include the configure option --disable-startup-notification to force a build without it even if installed.

  • SpaceFM's overwrite query dialog (the one that asks you if you want to rename or overwrite a file) has been redesigned, with more space for long filenames and an auto-rename feature. You can also now resize the dialog and the size will be remembered.

  • The task popup dialogs can now show optional overwrite and error controls. This means you can queue tasks and set them to overwrite all or auto rename without waiting for the query dialog. Error handling may now be set on a per task basis.

  • A precision timer has been added to provide more smooth and accurate copy speeds in the task manager.

  • A problem detecting mounted btrfs partitions has been corrected in SpaceFM 0.8.1 and udevil 0.3.4.

  • Russian and French translations have been updated, and thanks to tct1501 for a new partial Dutch translation.

  • The SpaceFM Wiki has some new plugins, including a few by Keith that use the new SpaceFM Dialog.

  • spacefm and udevil are now included at SlackBuilds.org

  • A new custom distro Spaceman has been created by Todd Robinson. This is a Lubuntu 12.04 release with all updates applied, and SpaceFM installed as the default file manager.

What's Ahead?
A port of SpaceFM to GTK version 3 has been started by BwackNinja. Rather than simply requiring gtk3, the plan is to make SpaceFM buildable with either gtk2 or gtk3 via a configure switch. Thus support for gtk2 is planned to continue for some time, even after the port is complete. If you're really eager to try gtk3, BwackNinja has an under-development gtk3 fork at github. He reports it does build with gtk3 but still has some minor issues to be addressed. In the coming weeks, as this code matures, it will be reviewed, tested and merged into SpaceFM's gtk3 branch for beta testing, and from there into the next branch. Thanks to BwackNinja for contributing this port!

0.8.1 ChangeLog:

    added task manager queue/pause #147
    disable task manager find
    set minimum dialog and task pane sizes #56
    added Tasks user manual section
    fix clang compile error #162
    fix hang on dir tree sel access error #164
    fix file search find within symlink dir #122
    add double-click opens file search result #109
    fix vfs move dest symlink device determination
    abort copy/move remove incomplete file
    move Sort submenu from Style to View submenu
    gtk 2.18 compatibility #146
    remove explicit libgdk-pixbuf2.0-0 dependency #146
    added precision timer for more accurate/smooth copy speeds
    btrfs moint point detection workaround #165
    fix segfault on blank Preferences Terminal setting #166
    add rxvt to terminal programs list #166
    desktop drop onto folder #45
    fix new tab path merged if the last dir spec is / #167
    libstartup-notification-0.9 or -1.0 optional #19 #146
    adjustment for build on debian squeeze (gtk 2.20 glib 2.24)
    ctrl-Q as default Exit key
    allow stop of exited task #168
    auto stop on bad exit status #168
    updated Russian translation
    added partial Dutch translation by tct1501
    remove vert scrollbar compact mode
    per task error and overwrite options; auto rename
    added View|Tasks|Queue|Pause On Error
    click in icon/compact unselects others
    rewrite vfs abort handling
    emit created on netfs rename
    rework overwrite dialog
    allow overwrite file with link
    icon view mode automatic vertical scrollbar
    rewrite get_name_extension
    rework stop if error first
    focus file list on task man hide
    exit status zero on dialog help
    popups|stay on top no longer default



0.8.0 released
2012-Sep-14

SpaceFM 0.8.0 introduces the new SpaceFM Dialog, a built-in feature of SpaceFM which allows scripts to easily use much of the power of GTK to create and control custom dialogs. A new Dialog section has been added to the User's Manual to fully document SpaceFM Dialog.

Other changes to SpaceFM 0.8.0 include:

  • The 'beta' designation has been removed from this release, making 0.8.0 the first stable release
  • SpaceFM's license has been changed to GPL3+ (was GPL2+)
  • a problem which caused single-click mode auto-select to scroll horizontally has been corrected
  • default keys are now set for Go|Tab|Tab N = Alt+1 thru Alt+0
  • Task Show Output now raises dialog only once
  • A custom default command script may now be saved as ~/.config/spacefm/scripts/default-script. Also, the bash variables available for use in command scripts are now included in the User's Manual.
  • Russian and French translation updates
  • several miscellaneous fixes (see ChangeLog)
  • SpaceFM with udevil is included in the new antiX-12 base and full



0.7.11 released
2012-Aug-15

Recommended reading for all SpaceFM users - A new Path Bar section of the user's manual has been added to document the uses and methods of the Path Bar. The Path Bar probably does more than you know!

SpaceFM's find-as-you-type search function now supports several modes, and also is now UTF-8 compliant:

  • Pattern Mode: If the search key contains at least one asterisk (*) or question mark (?), a glob substring search is now used. (An asterisk is automatically added before and after your key before testing.) For pattern usage see IEEE Pattern Matching Notation.

  • Non-Pattern Mode: If your key does not contain an asterisk (*) or question mark (?), a normal substring search is performed, with the following new special characters recognized:

    • If the search key begins with a caret (^), the search will match names beginning with your key.
    • If your key ends with a dollar sign ($), the search will match names ending with your key.
    • You can use both a caret and dollar sign to constrain both. (Other regex characters and wildcards are not supported in this mode.)

  • As before, anytime you use an uppercase letter anywhere in your search key, the search mode becomes case sensitive.

  • As before, regardless of mode, you can press down or up arrow, or scroll wheel up/down, to go to the next or previous matched filename.

In addition, SpaceFM 0.7.11 includes the following changes:

  • A new custom command style Confirmation has been added to the Design Mode menu.

  • A new command line option --no-saved-tabs, -n has been added which causes SpaceFM to not load saved tabs when opening a new window, even if File|Saved Tabs was used in the last saved session. This allows you to open an additional window containing only a single folder, for example.

  • Command line option --reuse-tab can now be used in conjunction with other options

  • Specifying command line option --panel=N without a folder path now shows and focuses panel N

  • The user's manual Invocation section has been updated with additional command line usage examples.

  • Network URLs can now be specified on the command line same as folder paths. This means SpaceFM can now be set as a handler for a given protocol, eg in spacefm.desktop you can set:
    MimeType=inode/directory;inode/mount-point;x-scheme-handler/ssh;x-scheme-handler/smb;x-scheme-handler/nfs;x-scheme-handler/ftp;

  • Edit|Select By Pattern has been added to the file list's context menu to select files by glob. This function can also be accessed using a percent prefix in the Path Bar.

  • A custom Protocol Handler may now be configured, allowing custom scripts or programs to be used to open URLs, and allowing custom protocols to be added.

  • When no files are selected, the status bar now displays the current directory. If the canonicalized path differs, the status bar shows the canonical path. (The canonical or 'real' path is determined by recursively following all links in the path.)

  • Go|Real Path has been added to the file list's context menu. If no files are selected, this will cause SpaceFM to change to the canonical path of the current directory. If files are selected, the first selected file's path will be canonicalized, and SpaceFM will change to the canonical directory and select the file. So, for example, selecting a link and selecting Go|Real Path will take you to the real file target, regardless of the number of compounded links in the path.

  • File|Root Window now opens the current folder.

  • libgtk2.0-bin has been added as a SpaceFM dependency when using build option --disable-pixmaps (recommended). The provided deb packages now include this dependency.

  • SpaceFM's overwrite query dialog now shows file times and sizes for comparing the source file to the file you are overwriting

  • SpaceFM now automatically runs 'udevil clean' if it detects another process unmounting a device, in order to remove any udevil-created mount point. This is only run if udevil is the default Mount Command or Unmount Command.

  • Automatic unmounting of ejected media has been corrected - be sure to update to udevil 0.3.2

  • File change detection is now done on all filesystems except on non-block devices which are type nfs fuse cifs smbfs or ftpfs. If you encounter an additional filesystem type for which you believe change detection should be disabled (for example a network filesystem which causes GUI hangs while copying) please report the issue.

  • Pressing F1 (default help key) while the Path Bar or Devices list are focused will now open the manual to the appropriate section.

  • A problem with target selection when dragging and dropping in Icon view mode which caused SpaceFM to drop the files into the wrong folder has been corrected

  • Vladimir Kudrya's Russian translation has been updated.

0.7.11 ChangeLog:

    added --no-saved-tabs, -n command line option to not load saved tabs #110
    --reuse-tab can be used in conjunction with other options
    File|Root Window opens current folder #116
    specifying --panel=N without a dir shows and focuses panel N
    handle network URLs on command line
    user manual Invocation updated
    added dependency libgtk2.0-bin [spacefm 0.7.10 with --disable-pixmaps]
    find-as-you-type search options #85
    rename dialog name selection UTF-8 compliant #127
    replace G_VALUE_INIT macro #126
    added file list Edit|Select By Pattern
    adjust parse url
    Show Output option should open on additional output after closure
    Remove Text Type Association popup note
    display file sizes and times in overwrite query
    file change detection blacklist non-block nfs fuse cifs smbfs ftpfs #129
    percent in path bar select by pattern
    fix hang on click on 5000+ selected files in list view
    clean udevil mount points on device removal, exit
    fix auto umount on eject
    fix icon view drag target #132
    added custom Protocol Handler setting to Path Bar context menu
    status bar show canonicalized current dir
    added Go|Real Path
    added user manual GUI|Path Bar



0.7.10 released
2012-Jul-25

Thanks to Vladimir Kudrya for a complete Russian translation of SpaceFM (and udevil 0.3.1).

SpaceFM's icon designer, Goran Simovic, has provided new SpaceFM icons for the Faenza theme (see locations below).

New sort options have been added to allow a natural sort and a case sensitive sort. Also, folders in the file list may now be places after files, or mixed with files. Hidden files may now be placed after regular files. Right-click on the file list and select View|Style|Sort to adjust these new options. Natural sort is now the new default.

The status bar and running tasks now show one decimal place for GB and TB sizes under 10.

A new configure option --disable-pixmaps has been added. Although it is not the default, it is recommended for packagers and users to build with this option, which causes SpaceFM's icons to be installed to the newer /usr/share/icons/hicolor rather than /usr/share/pixmaps. This enables GTK's icon cache for these icons. Also, the Faenza icons will be installed to /usr/share/icons/Faenza with this option. When building with --disable-pixmaps, after install be sure to run:

    sudo gtk-update-icon-cache -q -t -f /usr/share/icons/hicolor
    sudo gtk-update-icon-cache -q -t -f /usr/share/icons/Faenza
Otherwise the icons may not be found. The provided deb packages, the self-extracting installer, and Arch AUR spacefm-git now build with --disable-pixmaps and run gtk-update-icon-cache automatically. [UPDATE: Requires libgtk2.0-bin]

A problem introduced in SpaceFM 0.7.9 which caused file changes to not be detected on aufs and devtmpfs filesystems has been corrected.

A problem where the Skip All function in the file overwrite query behaved like Cancel has been corrected.

A reported problem building SpaceFM on Slackware should now be corrected.

SpaceFM is now included in the SystemRescueCD live distro.

trile7's Trash Plugin, available on the wiki, now supports multiple devices and partitions.



0.7.9 released
2012-Jul-13

New in SpaceFM 0.7.9:

  • Parts of SpaceFM's GUI and multi-threaded VFS have been redesigned to allow tasks (such as Copy, Move, or custom commands) to run better. This improves performance with network filesystems (eg nfs), reduces lag in the GUI during file operations, reduces CPU load during copying and other tasks, eliminates rare crashes caused by thread race conditions, and allows the run dialog to handle fast/flooded output on stdout and stderr.
    TIP: When copying large files TO a network filesystem, avoid working in the remote directory tab until the copy is complete to avoid GUI lag issues. (See development details on the new threading design)

  • File changes are no longer detected in filesystems on non-block devices (except tmpfs and ramfs). This avoids blocking the GUI with network filesystems as copies are in progress, but also means you may need to manually refresh to see the updated file sizes. (If you encounter a filesystem that you think needs a file change monitoring exception, please report it.)

  • As in prior versions, before starting a copy or other task, SpaceFM will recursively calculate the total size of selected files. As of version 0.7.9, this calculation will time out after 5 seconds, to avoid long delays when using a network filesystem.

  • To improve performance, the total size of files being deleted is no longer calculated in advance. This means that a delete dialog will no longer contain a 'time remaining' estimate. (Due to filesystem particulars, such estimates were not very accurate anyway.)

  • A minor bug where SpaceFM failed to close a file being copied when the copy was aborted or an error occured has been corrected. This bug caused some files to remain open until SpaceFM was closed, which sometimes interfered with unmounting.

  • A bug which caused SpaceFM to fail to report an error when copying an inaccessable subdirectory has been corrected. (Note that this bug dates all the way back to VFS code from legacy PCManFM, which means this bug is also present in PCManFM-Mod.)

  • A deadlock (hang caused by multiple threads) which occured on a quick directory change while a large directory was being loaded has been corrected.

  • Tomas Forsman (TForsman), developer of Foresight Linux, has contributed a Swedish translation for SpaceFM which is approximately 40% complete. TForsman's suggestion for translators to use the 'poedit' program has been added to the TRANSLATE instructions file.

  • jpfleury has updated SpaceFM's (complete) French translation for 0.7.9.

  • The 'Path' column in the task manager has been renamed 'Folder'.

  • The Folder, Item, and To columns in the task manager are now ellipsized.

  • The Root submenu of the devices menu is now enabled even if no device is selected.

  • The rename and new file/folder dialogs now apply custom fonts to all entries

  • Due to the improved handling of flooded output, SpaceFM now runs tar verbose for archive extraction and creation

  • A problem with use of the urxvtc terminal program has been corrected. Note that like lxterminal and konsole, urxvtc will not run correctly with both Run As Task and Run In Terminal checked (due to the lack of a separate instance option in these terminals).

  • Clicking on a device now shows any mount error

  • The How MIME Works section of the user's manual has been updated and corrected with regard to update-desktop-database. SpaceFM also now runs update-desktop-database automatically (in addtion to update-mime-database) if you use the MIME menu to make changes externally.

  • udevil is now included with SpaceFM as the default file manager/mount solution for Parted Magic.

  • antiX-12 will include SpaceFM with udevil in its default installation (currently available in antiX testing).




0.7.8 released
2012-Jun-16

New in SpaceFM 0.7.8:

  • Thanks to jpfleury, a new and complete french translation is now included for SpaceFM. Note that due to design mode, your configuration overrides the language file for menu item names. To see the newly translated menu item names, you must start with a fresh configuration (no session file). Other internal strings, such as dialogs, will appear translated regardless of your configuration.

  • Design mode can now be used in the Open context menu on application names to open the new MIME Menu, which provides a way to easily add and remove application associations, and edit and view relevant MIME files (.desktop, XML MIME file type definition files, etc). SpaceFM now uses and modifies your mimeapps.list file rather than the old defaults.list. The new How MIME Works section of the manual explains the details.

  • SpaceFM now accepts ftp://, nfs://, smb://, and ssh:// URLs in the path bar (for formatting, see udevil --help. Requires udevil and the appropriate network filesystem support (eg curlftpfs, cifs-utils, etc). [Note: SpaceFM has some unresolved performance issues with network filesystems - until these are addressed you may find it lags or becomes temporarily unresponsive when the network is busy copying, etc.]

  • The Open context menu now includes a 'Mount ISO' menu item to automatically mount ISO files (requires udevil). This menu item appears in the Open submenu when you right-click on an ISO file. The Open|Auto-Mount ISO option can also be checked so SpaceFM will automatically mount and open an ISO file when you click on it.

  • The Devices list now shows mounted networks and mounted ISO files (loop devices) if the new options Show|Mounted Networks and Show|Mounted Files are checked in Settings, and can be used to unmount these (unmounting requires udevil).

  • Mounted networks can now be bookmarked from the Devices List, or by editing a bookmark.

  • The new menu item 'Edit udevil.conf' has been added to the Devices list context Root submenu.

  • SpaceFM now automatically unmounts removed devices. For example, if you remove a usb stick without first unmounting it, SpaceFM will attempt to unmount it for you.

  • Creating a new file, folder, or manual link in SpaceFM now uses a modified version of the rename dialog, providing more space for entering filenames. This also adds the ability to create in other paths, create as root, create relative links, and create new files and folders using templates. SpaceFM now looks in $XDG_TEMPLATES_DIR/, ~/Templates/, or ~/.templates/ to find template files. Templates are simply empty or partially filled files used to create new files (of any type), so instead of an empty file you get a copy of the template file. Any files or links to files may be placed in your Templates folder. Subdirectories in the templates folder can also be used to create new folders pre-filled with a set of files, or to organize templates.

  • A [Create] & Open button has been added to the new file/folder dialog to create a new file or folder and open it in one step.

  • The new xfce4 'terminal' is now supported.

  • A new -r, --reuse-tab command line option has been added to open a folder in the current tab of an already open SpaceFM window, instead of creating a new tab. This can also be used on initial startup to prevent SpaceFM from creating a default tab.

  • Mouse buttons 8 and 9 can now be used to go back and forward in SpaceFM, in addition to buttons 4 and 5.

  • A number of new and improved plugins have been contributed to the plugins wiki
For additional changes, see the complete ChangeLog below.

0.7.8 ChangeLog:

    use/update mimeapps.list over defaults.list closes #71
    added design mode on mime apps opens MIME menu
    deprecated MimeType x-directory removed from spacefm desktop files
    new archive save dialog uses literal filename and extension fixes #82
    accept options in terminal program setting
    added user manual MIME Menu section
    accept network urls
    mount iso files from Open context menu; auto-mount iso
    added Root|Edit udevil.conf to devices menu
    allow edit bookmark to network URL
    corrected Click runs executables pref not saved fixes #84
    auto-unmount removed media and devices
    support xfce terminal
    improve new file/folder/link dialog
    change deprecated gdk_pixbuf_ref to g_object_ref
    don't remove .gz file when extracting closes #90
    CLI added -r, --reuse-tab Open folder in current tab of last used window
    corrected non-translatable strings pulls #100 fixes #88
    new french translation
    no cancel sel on desktop right-click in single-click mode fixes #76
    dont open pipes for mime type even if size > 0 closes #80
    mouse buttons 8 and 9 on file list go back and forward (like 4 and 5)
    fixes extract multiple zip,7z,rar files
    changed File Name Contains: to Filename: in File Search fixes #86
    corrected duplicated menu key shortcuts fixes #92
    error on missing edit udevil.conf fixes #98
    sync new file open; select new closes #35



0.7.7 released
2012-May-27

SpaceFM now automatically detects and uses udevil if installed for mounting. Otherwise pmount, udisks2 or udisks1 is used. Or you can set your custom Mount Command.

Also, SpaceFM is now the default file manager for Parted Magic.

ChangeLog:

    escape mount point in dev props scripts fixes #70
    fixed File|File Search keybinding
    extract zip, rar, 7z in terminal for output & password prompt fixes #72
    if no 7za, use 7zr for 7zip extraction and creation closes #62
    added rar creation closes #36 ; rar zip & 7z creation runs in terminal
    fixed hang on new tab added after mount
    fixed make errors with --disable-desktop-integration fixes #78
    udevil discovery; pmount ahead of udisks



Added to Arch Linux [community] repo
2012-May-05

SpaceFM has been added to the Arch Linux [community] repository (i686 & amd64). Thanks to Arch TU Bartłomiej Piotrowski for maintaining these packages. The Arch AUR also still contains spacefm-git, which provides the 'next' branch as a work in progress.

Also, I received word from Patrick Verner that Parted Magic will soon be replacing PCManFM-Mod with SpaceFM as its default file manager - not sure if this has reached their test release yet, but it should be there fairly soon.



0.7.6 released
2012-Apr-19

SpaceFM 0.7.6 is a maintenance release to fix a few issues with 0.7.5, especially media detection. Also, file permissions now show the SUID and SGID bits, and also Linux file type (char device, block device, pipe, socket), like ls output.

The recommendation to enable kernel polling has been added to the user's manual and README. This especially important for media detection when udisks is not used.

Please note that the provided deb packages since version 0.7.5 require $TMPDIR (usually /tmp) to be mounted without noexec (these packages build from source in $TMPDIR). Otherwise you may want to build a deb package from source per the README.

0.7.6 ChangeLog:

    unmount on exit no longer default (affects new installs)
    documented deb packages require $TMPDIR not be noexec closes #64
    relax has media criteria fixes #68
    hack for icon theme missing application-x-xz-compressed-tar fixes #55
    added kernel polling recommendation to docs closes #66
    desktop new tab present window fixes #16
    file permissions show SUID and SGID bits
    file permissions show char device, block device, pipe, socket
    panel show inhibit tab creation on spec



0.7.5 released
2012-Apr-14

Changes in SpaceFM 0.7.5:

  • removes dependency on udisks - Although SpaceFM has never had a strict udisks dependency, the device manager used udisks for device detection, information, and mounting. As of v0.7.5, SpaceFM can now be used without udisks. SpaceFM now uses udev directly for device detection and information. For mounting devices as a non-root user, udisks v1, udisks v2, or pmount will be automatically detected and used, or you can specify a custom command. There is also a custom mount solution currently under development. These changes do not affect the hal build of SpaceFM.
    UPDATE: If you're testing SpaceFM without udisks installed, you may want to enable kernel polling on your system.

  • The built-in archive extraction methods may now be used in the desktop manager

  • An option View|Preferences|Interface|Default Drag Action has been added which allows you to control what action is performed by default when dragging files. When set to Automatic, the drag will move files to the same device, and copy files to a different device. Or the option can be set to always Move, Copy, or Link. Regardless of the default setting, you can always override it by holding down keys. Hold down Ctrl to force a copy, Shift to force a move, or Ctrl+Shift to force a link.

  • SpaceFM has undergone a code review to clear all compiler warnings in the entire project, which resulted in a few potential problems being corrected.

  • If no user configuration exists, SpaceFM will now read a default config from /etc/xdg/spacefm/ This allows distros and admins to set a default configuration.

  • SpaceFM is now the default file manager for the upcoming Foresight Lxde, and Foresight includes spacefm in its repositories.

  • kdesudo is now supported. Also, when configured for /usr/bin/kdesu, SpaceFM will now also look in the $(kde4-config --path libexec) directory for kdesu (as KDE4 may no longer install kdesu to the user's path).

  • The side box containing Devices, Bookmarks, and Tree is now fixed-width, meaning its width will not change unless you drag the slider to change it.

  • Although no major new sections have been added, the user's manual has been updated to reflect changes in this version.

  • Instructions for translators have been added to the README.

  • The provided deb packages in Downloads (also in the PPA) now contain the source code and build automatically from source. Although this requires additional build dependencies and takes a little longer, this will make the packages work more reliably on most Debian-based distros. Or, you can build your own deb package using the easy instructions in the README file.
    NOTE: The location of IgnorantGuru's PPA has changed. Please update your sources.list to continue receiving updates:
        deb http://ignorantguru.github.com/debian/ unstable main
  • A number of new user-contributed plugins have been added to the wiki since the last release

  • A number of issues have been corrected as detailed below.

0.7.5 changelog:
    replaced udisks with libudev kernel support for device detection and info
    udisks v1 & v2 now supported for mount/unmount as normal user
    added device Settings|Un/Mount Command options to customize mount program
    corrected race condition create tmp dir
    status bar update fixes
    side box fixed size fixes #6
    scroll setting retained between sessions fixes #13
    fixed file info update on existing fixes #14 fixes #15
    reuse window on open folder on desktop fixes #16
    built-in archive functions on desktop closes #18
    shift-click selects range on desktop closes #47
    code review
    consistent 64bit file size support fixes #60
    added Foresight Linux to README and manual closes #59
    added automatic use of pmount if udisks not installed
    copy user config skeleton from /etc/xdg/spacefm
    default drag action option; repair automatic drag context
    file search size limit toggles sensitivity
    added translation instructions to the README
    support for kdesudo and $(kde4-config --path libexec)/kdesu


Debian Packages For 0.7.4 Rebuilt
2012-Apr-09

Due to changing libraries in Debian sid which are now out of sync with Ubuntu and other Debian variants, the SpaceFM packages for v0.7.4 don't always work correctly. Binary deb packages of SpaceFM will no longer be offered, but to make installing more convenient for Debian users, I have created deb packages that contain the source code and automatically build and install with your package manager. This will ensure that SpaceFM is built for the specific libraries you have installed on your system.

These packages are available for version 0.7.4 in the new PPA on github. They should work with your package manager just like the old packages did, except they will take a little longer to install. If you're not using the PPA, you can obtain them in the updated packages directory (to save a file there, click on the filename, then click 'View Raw').

If you have already installed 0.7.4, you will need to first remove it, clear your package cache, then install the new package. With apt-get this is done like this:

    apt-get remove spacefm
    apt-get clean
    apt-get update
    apt-get install spacefm

If you don't want packages that install automatically from source, you can also build your own binary deb packages or build from source using instructions in the README. Also, you can submit a packaging request with your distro, asking them to include packages of SpaceFM in their repositories.


SpaceFM & Udev
2012-Apr-06

A blog post on what's currently happening with SpaceFM with regard to udisks2 and other issues.

A number of new SpaceFM plugins have recently been added to the wiki. The latest addition is JP Fleury's Corbeille-SpaceFM, a freedesktop-compliant trash plugin optimized for speed and large files, available in French and English. He has some speed comparisons there that look promising!

This means there are now several trash plugins to choose from. Some of the plugins are from Arch users, with some discussion in the SpaceFM Arch forum thread (the later pages deal more with plugins).

Also, a new official SpaceFM IRC channel: #spacefm on irc.freenode.net. This is more intended for general chat than for support, but we'll see what develops. OmegaPhil is in charge there.


0.7.4 released
2012-Apr-01

IMPORTANT: A bug was discovered in spacefm version <=0.7.3 which can cause files to be deleted when a move fails. Please update to 0.7.4.

0.7.4 ChangeLog:

    added git build instructions to README
    better standards compliance for data doc dirs fixes #8
    no del on move error independent of error control fixes #9


0.7.3 released
2012-Mar-29

SpaceFM 0.7.3 adds some important features and bugfixes:

  • The new SpaceFM icons by Goran Simovic are now included, plus alternates (/usr/share/pixmaps/spacefm*.png). If you've set View|Window Icon to a custom icon, you may want to clear it and check out the new default icon. There is also a new icon for File Search.
  • The user's manual is available in the updated Help menu (now installed to /usr/share/spacefm), and context-sensitive help has been added. To receive help on a menu item, just right-click on it and select Help from the design menu. [Because the user's manual is incomplete, not everything has help available. The device manager menu is fully documented, as is the design menu.] For help in the design menu, hover the mouse over an item and press F1. Help also works for plugins and custom commands - it opens a README file for you to view or edit.
  • The mouse shortcuts for Design Mode have changed, and new keyboard shortcuts are now available. The primary change is that now right-click exclusively opens the design menu (it is no longer optional in Preferences). Other mouse combos have been added. Also, design mode can now be used with only the keyboard. For example, highlight any menu item and press F1 for help, or F2 to open the design menu. See all the new shortcuts
  • Some problems with copying plugins to other menus have been corrected.
  • xdg-su and gnomesu are now available in the graphical su programs list.
  • The default drag action has been changed from move to copy. If you want to force move instead, hold down Shift. Or hold down Ctrl and Shift to create a link.
  • The user's manual has been updated to reflect changes in 0.7.3
  • Instructions have been added to the README file for using gdb to provide a backtrace on crashes, which helps to get them fixed more quickly
Also, there are now a number of plugins available on the wiki, including a trash plugin that has reportedly been working well.

0.7.3 ChangeLog:
    new icons and logo by Goran Simovic plus alternates
    added context sensitive help on design menu
    changed/added design mode key and mouse shortcuts
    renamed Smartbar to Path Bar
    renamed View|Toolbox to View|Toolbar
    when copy context, copy plugin skin context
    equate display :0.0 & :0 fixes #5
    changed debug info for sf ticket 88000
    fixed panel bar always shown on cancel fullscreen
    no folder size display; right-align size column
    moved refresh to after home/default on left toolbar
    fixed issues affecting opensuse build
    added support for xdg-su and gnomesu
    corrected problem copying plugins
    fixed segfault on toolbar config menu?
    changed default drag action to copy (hold shift or ctrl+shift to override)





See older news items on the old Sourceforge blog (no longer updated)






SpaceFM Icons & Logo by Goran Simovic (C) 2013