[ANN] Bantam: a lightweight file manager for X11

[ANN] Bantam: a lightweight file manager for X11

[Matt Gushee]

[ ... written in OCaml, of course! ]

To make a long story short: I couldn't find a file manager that had just 
the right combination of features, so I created Bantam. It attempts to 
be a fast, light, unobtrusive productivity aid for power users of 
POSIX/X11 systems. Important features include:

  * An arbitrary number of directory views
  * Single-keystroke commands
  * Internal text file viewer
  * Configurable interface to external viewers and editors
  * A minimum of visual clutter (i.e. no icons, etc.)

Bantam 0.1 is now available in source and Linux binary packages. The 
binary should work on any system with Tcl/Tk 8.4 installed. If you have 
any trouble installing or running it, *please* let me know.

The Bantam home page is <http://matt.gushee.net/software/bantam/>.

Enjoy!

-- 
Matt Gushee
Englewood, CO, USA

Re: [Caml-list] [ANN] Bantam: a lightweight file manager for X11

[Matt Gushee]

Janne Hellsten wrote:

 > Hi Matt,
 >
 > I compiled this with Ocaml 3.08.3 & Tcl/Tk 8.4.  Alas, not all is
 > well.  When I run bantam.bin, I get this:
 >
 > janne@nurbian:~/bantam-0.1$ ./bantam.bin Fatal error: exception Not_found
 > Raised by primitive operation at unknown location
 >
 > This was all I got with byte-code and OCAMLRUNPARAM=b=1.  Native
 > version printed just the Not_found exception info.


Well, you're being too clever! You (no, I don't really mean you, the 
OCaml developer, I mean "you" the generic user) are not supposed to know 
bantam.bin even exists; you're just supposed to run 'bantam', which is a 
shell script.

The cause of that exception is

   Sys.getenv("BANTAM_USER_DIR")

That variable is set by the 'bantam' shell script to its default value, 
$HOME/.bantam; or you can override it by setting the variable manually 
(BTW, the shell script also creates the $BANTAM_USER_DIR if it doesn't 
exist).

Now, I agree this is a problem. I suppose that exception should be 
handled, and maybe there's a need for better documentation. I'm not 
really sure of the best way to deal with this, but one of my objectives 
was to be able to produce an easily installed, relocatable binary. And 
there needs to be a per-user directory for configuration, helper 
scripts, and trash. The shell script is a bit of a kludge, but I don't 
see another way to do it without either (a) eliminating flexibility in 
installation or (b) limiting the audience for the program to OCaml 
developers. I'm open to suggestions.

I appreciate the feedback. I'll add an exception handler in the next 
version. Meanwhile, see what happens if you just run 'bantam.'

Best regards,
Matt

-- 
Matt Gushee
Englewood, CO, USA