10 September 2012 / Mac OS X Surviving Mac OS X Bash Terminal With Midnight Commander (MC) Abstract: Midnight Commander (MC) is one of the few tools I'm still using since I've been inducted into software engineering more than 10 years ago (for comparison I've changed 5 integrated development environments (IDE)). In short, MC is one of those few things that changes your world. That’s why I’m going to show you how you can painlessly integrate MC with Mac OS X bash terminal. Goal: Configuring Midnight Commander under Mac OS X bash terminal. Acknowledgement: My gratitude goes to the open source community and especially to: Miguel de Icaza – creator.
Abstract : Midnight Commander (MC) is one of the few tools I'm still using since I've been inducted into software engineering more than 10 years ago (for comparison I've changed 5 integrated development environments (IDE) ). MC is classified as 'a visual file manager' but for me is something much more, it's an engineering booster. In fact it's my fist IDE (MCedit supports color highlighting for various programming languages). In short, MC is one of those few things that changes your world. That's why I'm going to show you how you can painlessly integrate MC with Mac OS X bash terminal.
Goal : Configuring Midnight Commander under Mac OS X bash terminal
Acknowledgement : My gratitude goes to the open source community and especially to:
If that doesn't suit you, our users have ranked more than 100 alternatives to FreeCommander and many of them are available for Mac so hopefully you can find a suitable replacement. Other interesting Mac alternatives to FreeCommander are Midnight Commander (Free, Open Source), Thunar (Free, Open Source), fman (Freemium) and Finder (Free).
Let's get started!
Installation: I'm a huge fan of homebrew (thanks Max!) and I advise you to install it and work with it. In short, Homebrew is 'the missing package manager for OS X'. Installing Homebrew is as easy as running the following command in the terminal prompt:
Once you have Homebrew, installing MC is exactly three words:
Side note: You may wish to install bash-completion and take advantage of the Tab key on the terminal prompt. If so, do the following:
... and ensure that your .bash_profile has the following content inside:
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Note that you have to perform:
or re-open your terminal for the changes to take effect.
Mac OS X - fixing the shortcuts mess: No, I have no idea why the Apple guys have created such a big mess with the keyboard shortcuts. And yes, it's up to you, my dearest reader, to decide if you want to fix it as I suggest. Here is what I've done so that I can use my _F_unctional keys (the F keys):
Go to:
Midnight Commander Mac Os X Dmg Not Recognized
... and make sure you have All controls checked
After that go to:
... and make sure you have Use all F1, F2 etc. keys as standard function keys checked
Midnight Commander Mac Os X Dmg Software
Next open a Terminal and go to:
... and make sure you have Use option as meta keyunchecked.
Now, every F9 will enable MC menu bar and every F10 button press will exit MC (instead of doing a complex fingers split which may not work but which will certainly hurt your hand).
Playing with MC shortcuts: What about the cool MC shortcuts? Before I present you with some of the shortcuts mapping you should be aware that pressing two times the Esc button will close any MC pop-up or search box, and that there are three types of shortcuts:
Pressing (and releasing) Esc and then pressing another key
Pressing and holding Ctrl and then pressing another key
Using the _F_unctional key
Here are some mappings:
Keeping working directory after exiting MC: Now, I find this MC feature really cool but of course it's up to you to decide if you want to enabled it or not. In case you want, make sure you have the following (or similar, depending on the midnight commander version) line in your .bash_profile:
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IMPORTANT: As you can see from the line above, it includes the midnight commander version, so please modify accordingly to match your installed version.
Note that you have to perform:
or re-open your terminal for the changes to take effect.