7.4.2 - Have you ever wanted a BS-free time format in mc?
Ever since 2008 when I started using Knoppix 5.3.1 (heavily remastered) I was stunned by the really obfuscating style of displaying access/modify/change time for files in mc.
Simply looking at the whole column of time in a panel in mc is bound to get someone in a mental institution.
I never understood the process of thinking on this aspect of the programmers who wrote this piece of software, otherwise very very useful.
When it comes to representation of time, the only format that makes sense to me is "YYYY-mm-dd HH:MM".
(Right, the year needs all 4 digits, anyone trying to tell me otherwise is missing some critical lamps. And the format having "day/month/year" is really retarded, especially when the year has only 2 digits and it's impossible to tell which is the month and which is the day and which is the year!! That is really really stupid, I'm sorry but there's just no other way of saying it.)
Why "YYYY-mm-dd HH:MM"? Simply because it sorts itself out naturally timewise by means of regular alphabetical sorting if used in any indexing system.
For instance I scan all my receipts from stores and save them in my data storage. And guess what the format of the file name is? "YYYY-mm-dd HH.MM Store_Name.tif"
Simply displaying them in konqueror or any file manager they get sorted temporally by themselves.
Quite a while ago I dug up the sources for mc-4.6.1 and started looking for a way to change the display format.
I came up with a patch (see attachments to this message) which successfully gave me the time format displayed the way I wanted in mc.
So now, since I started using Knoppix 7.4.2 it crossed my mind this would be the next nice trick to do in it.
So here's what I did:
(NOTE: everything described below is being done as root under the original Knoppix 7.4.2 DVD Live environment)
Open a konsole window as root in an empty directory (for instance /home/knoppix/Downloads).
Do the following:
Just for the record, I executed the code above on 2015 Jan 02. (It matters since at some point in the future the list of available package versions will change and the above code will have different consequences).
Then I downloaded two packages from snapshot.debian.org:
Then I made up a patch for the sources, that changes the time display format in mc's panels to what I described above.
You can download it from the attachments to this message (mc-4.8.12-BS-free_time_format.patch.gz).
Also you will need a script I prepared (update.sh) which looks like this:
Code:
#!/bin/sh
#### RUN THIS AS ROOT !!!!! #####
# src/setup.c lines 216 & 217 changed from:
#define FMTYEAR _("%b %e %Y")
#define FMTTIME _("%b %e %H:%M")
# to:
#define FMTYEAR _("%Y-%m-%d %H:%M")
#define FMTTIME _("%Y-%m-%d %H:%M")
# (but it turns out it works without this, so it's not necessary)
# lib/timefmt.c line 81 changed from:
# return i18n_timelength_cache
# to:
# return 16;
# lib/timefmt.c line 114 changed from:
# return i18n_timelength_cache
# to:
# return 16;
# lib/timefmt.c line 139 changed from:
# FMT_LOCALTIME (timebuf, sizeof (timebuf), fmt, when);
# to:
# FMT_LOCALTIME (timebuf, sizeof (timebuf), _("%Y-%m-%d %H:%M"), when);
# Install dependencies required by the (re)building process.
# At the time of running this script I had run "apt-get update" on 2015-Jan-02
# after previously deleting /var/cache/apt/*.bin and /var/lib/apt/lists/*debian*
echo -e "\n\n-------- removing libgnutls-dev ---------\n"
apt-get -y remove libgnutls-dev
echo -e "\n\n-------- removing libgcrypt11-dev ---------\n"
apt-get -y remove libgcrypt11-dev
echo -e "\n\n-------- installing libgcrypt20-dev ---------\n"
dpkg -i libgcrypt20-dev_1.6.1-2_i386.deb
echo -e "\n\n-------- installing libssh2-1-dev ---------\n"
dpkg -i libssh2-1-dev_1.4.3-4_i386.deb
echo -e "\n\n-------- installing a whole bunch ---------\n"
apt-get -y install dh-autoreconf autopoint intltool bison check e2fslibs-dev libaspell-dev libgpm-dev libslang2-dev
echo -e "\n\n-------- extracting mc-4.8.12 sources ---------\n"
dpkg-source -x mc_4.8.12-1.dsc
cd mc-4.8.12
# now change src/setup.c and lib/timefmt.c as described above
echo -e "\n\n-------- applying patch ---------\n"
patch -p1 <../mc-4.8.12-BS-free_time_format.patch
echo -e "\n\n-------- committing changes ---------\n"
dpkg-source --commit
echo -e "\n\n-------- rebuilding mc-4.8.12 debian packages ---------\n"
dpkg-buildpackage -us -uc
echo -e "\n\n-------- (re)installing mc-4.8.12 debian packages ---------\n"
cd ..
dpkg -i *.deb
exit 0
Copy/Paste the code above in kwrite and save it as "update.sh" in the same dir as the rest of the files.
So at this point, your directory should look like this:
Code:
knoppix@Microknoppix:~/Downloads$ ls -1
libgcrypt20-dev_1.6.1-2_i386.deb
libssh2-1-dev_1.4.3-4_i386.deb
mc_4.8.12-1.debian.tar.xz
mc_4.8.12-1.dsc
mc-4.8.12-BS-free_time_format.patch
mc_4.8.12.orig.tar.xz
update.sh
Now simply type:
Code:
. update.sh
or make the "update.sh" file executable and run it.
It should run flawlessly until the end and when it's done, your directory should look like this:
Of course you can save the *.deb files somewhere and include them later in a Knoppix 7.4.2 remaster permanently.
Now you can just type mc and you should see something like the snapshot attached to this message.
Of course, first you need to go in mc's menu at "Left" or "Right" or both and change the "Listing mode" for panels to "User defined" (include "mtime" or "atime" or "ctime" somewhere in there) otherwise the time column won't be displayed.
For instance this is what I had for "User defined" "Listing mode" when I took the snapshot:
Code:
half type name | size | mtime | perm | owner | group
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