RedBear-OS/local/recipes/tui/tlc

Twilight Commander (tlc) — Red Bear OS

TLC is Red Bear's internal TUI file manager, originally derived from Midnight Commander (MC) 4.8.33, but now architecturally and implementation-wise pure Rust, no FFI, no C compilation.

Status

TLC's source tree is TLC's own. It was derived from MC 4.8.33 once and fully rewritten in Rust — every Rust module, every Rust function, every Rust test is original Red Bear code. The C source of MC 4.8.33 lives in the canonical MC recipe at local/recipes/tui/mc/source/ and serves as read-only cross-reference for algorithm correctness.

TLC and MC are two separate, completely independent programs.

Name

Originally tc (Twilight Commander). Renamed to tlc on 2026-06-13 to avoid collision with iproute2's /usr/bin/tc traffic-control binary and the third-party tc crate on crates.io. "TLC" is intentionally a double reading: Twilight List-and-Copy (the function) and Tender Loving Care (the ethos).

Architecture

local/recipes/tui/tlc/
├── PLAN.md                ← canonical plan, phase status, quality assessment
├── recipe.toml            ← cookbook recipe (custom template, cargo build)
└── source/                ← PURE RUST — 113 .rs files, 46k+ lines
    ├── Cargo.toml         ← [package] name = "tlc"
    ├── config/default.toml
    ├── locales/*.yml      ← rust-i18n catalogues
    └── src/               ← app, config, editor, filemanager, fs, key,
                              keymap, locale, log, ops, paths, skin,
                              terminal, text, vfs, viewer, widget

The recipe builds three binaries — tlc (file manager), tlcedit (standalone editor), and tlcview (standalone viewer) — and stages them at /usr/bin/ in the Red Bear OS image. tlc is registered in both redbear-mini.toml and redbear-full.toml configs as tlc = {}.

Why pure Rust, no FFI

• termion provides everything MC's tty layer did
• ratatui provides everything MC's widget layer did
• FFI adds unsafe, which project policy forbids
• Pure Rust code is auditable and deterministic

Build

Linux (host build, zero setup)

TLC is pure portable Rust — it builds and runs natively on Linux with no Redox-specific code or dependencies.

cd local/recipes/tui/tlc/source
cargo build --release          # tlc (5.0 MB), tlcedit (1.2 MB), tlcview (661 KB)
./target/release/tlc --version # tlc 0.2.5
./target/release/tlc           # launch file manager TUI
./target/release/tlcedit file.txt   # launch standalone editor
./target/release/tlcview file.txt   # launch standalone viewer
./target/release/tlc help      # list keybindings

Redox (cross build for ISO)

cd local/recipes/tui/tlc/source
cargo build --release --target x86_64-unknown-redox

# Full ISO with TLC installed
./local/scripts/build-redbear.sh redbear-mini   # includes /usr/bin/tlc
./local/scripts/build-redbear.sh redbear-full   # includes /usr/bin/tlc

# Single recipe via cookbook
./target/release/repo cook local/recipes/tui/tlc

Test

cd local/recipes/tui/tlc/source
cargo test --lib
# → 1213 passed; 0 failed (verified 2026-07-05)

Linux Portability

TLC is designed as a pure-Rust portable application. It uses:

• std::fs abstractions for all filesystem operations
• cfg(unix) gates for platform-specific behavior (stat, permissions)
• ratatui + termion for terminal rendering (works on any Unix tty)
• No target_os = "redox" or target_os = "linux" gates anywhere

The redox Cargo feature and redox-scheme dependency were removed (declared but never consumed — no source file used #[cfg(feature = "redox")]). TLC is the same binary on Linux and Redox.

Shared TUI palette

TLC's src/terminal/color.rs consumes the shared Red Bear TUI palette from local/recipes/tui/redbear-tui-theme/ (a Red Bear-internal library crate). The 23-field Theme struct in terminal/color.rs is preserved (it deserializes user TOML skins), but the DEFAULT_THEME and LIGHT_THEME constants are now built from the shared REDBEAR_DARK / REDBEAR_LIGHT presets via a const as_color(rgb) adapter.

All rendering code (widgets, dialogs, editor, viewer, file panels) sources colors exclusively from the Theme palette — no hardcoded Color::White/Color::Blue/etc. remain in any render path. Every render() method accepts a theme: &Theme parameter. User TOML skins with any of the 23 palette slots are fully functional via Skin::to_theme().

The brand red is #B52430 — the same red as the Red Bear OS icon, the loading background, the cub RedBearTheme::accent (when cub migrates), and every other TUI app that adopts the shared palette.

See local/recipes/tui/redbear-tui-theme/README.md for the full palette, contrast table, and migration guide.

Built-in skins

TLC ships with 8 built-in skins accessible via Alt-S at runtime:

Skin	Description
default-dark	Red Bear Dark (brand palette, default)
default-light	Red Bear Light
mc-classic	Midnight Commander Classic (blue/cyan)
mc-dark	MC Dark — gray panels, bright accents
mc-dark-gray	MC Dark Gray — near-black, desaturated
high-contrast	Black/white, WCAG-maximum
solarized-dark	Solarized Dark palette
nord	Nord palette

User TOML skins in ~/.config/tlc/skin/*.toml are also listed in the dialog. Selection persists to ~/.config/tlc/config.toml.

Phase status

Phase	Status
0 ops dialogs	✅
1 dual-panel shell	✅
2 F3 viewer	✅
3 F4 editor	✅
4 keymap + dispatcher	✅
5 editor polish	✅
6 filemanager + viewer extras	✅
7 VFS (local + remote backends)	✅ SFTP full read-write, FTP, scheme:// (Redox), tar/cpio/zip/extfs
8 archives + skin + i18n	✅ browse+extract+compress (Alt-Shift-C), 8 skins, i18n
13 skins + runtime selection	✅ 8 built-in skins, Alt-S dialog, config persistence
14a critical features	✅ menu bar (F9), select/unselect group, quick cd, Ctrl-O sub-shell, Alt-Enter cmdline
14b bug fixes	✅ viewer keys, editor cursor sync, overwrite dialog, Ctrl-O sub-shell
15a panel essentials	✅ marking (Ctrl-T), invert (*), sort cycle (Alt-T), history (Alt-H/Y/U), save setup (Alt-Shift-S), listing modes (Alt-L), mini-status, tab completion, cmdline auto-activate, editor block ops + selection highlight
15b shell + exec fixes	✅ foreground command execution (no popup), Ctrl+O drop/recreate Tui (clean terminal restore)
15c editor + percent + user menu	✅ bracket match (Alt-B), word completion (Alt-Tab), percent escapes (17 tokens), F2 user menu (INI parser + condition + extension filters)
15d bug fixes + standalone binaries	✅ ESC no-op on main screen (MC parity), editor arrow keys structural fix (Option B — cursor sync in every move_*/select_*), command execution (no pause, returns immediately), tlcedit + tlcview standalone binaries built and staged alongside tlc
15e syntax highlighter + render wiring	✅ Highlighter struct, syntax_for_path(), is_text_file() in editor/syntax.rs; wired into Editor::render() with viewport scroll state replay and selection overlay (split_spans_for_selection)
15f Jobs/Panelize/VFS dialogs	✅ Background jobs dialog (C-x j), external panelize (C-x !), VFS list (C-x a) — all safe Rust, Arc<Mutex<JobRegistry>>, zero unsafe
15g Ctrl-X chord + Compare Dirs + SymlinkRelative + dialogs	✅ Ctrl-X prefix dispatch (9 follow-ups), Compare Dirs (C-x d size-only), SymlinkRelative (C-x s), SymlinkEdit (C-x v), ScreenList/EditHistory/FilteredView wired, editor format paragraph (Alt-P), viewer growing buffer (tail -f)
15h File highlighting	✅ Type-based coloring in panel entries (9 categories: executable, archive, audio, video, image, source, documentation, database), extension tables + permission-bit detection
15i VFS archive panel integration	✅ Browse .tar/.tar.gz/.tar.bz2/.tar.xz/.zip/.cpio archives in-place; Enter opens archive, '..' at root exits to local filesystem; VFS scheme dispatch via for_path()
15j PanelInfo (C-x i) + PanelQuickView (C-x q)	✅ Inactive panel toggles to Info mode (filesystem summary + cursor file metadata) or QuickView mode (first 30 lines of cursor file, binary detection); toggle-only (excluded from Alt-L listing cycle)
15k Clippy cleanup	✅ All 20 clippy lints fixed across 9 files; only 1 pre-existing warning remains (mc_ext.rs Include(String) never read)
15l Split ratio + QuitQuiet + menubar + Compare files	✅ SplitMore/Less (Alt-Shift-Right/Left, 5% steps, 10-90%), QuitQuiet (Shift-F10 actually quits), F9 menubar expanded with all 20+ commands, Compare files (Ctrl-d, LCS diff viewer)
31 SortDialog + truncation + editor toggles	✅ SortDialog wired to Alt-Shift-T (field/reverse/case), filename truncation indicator (~), editor auto-indent toggle (Alt-A), editor show whitespace toggle (Alt-E)
33 Editor F9 menubar + PLAN refresh	✅ All editor F9 commands wired (New/Open/Save/SaveAs/Quit/Find/Replace/Bookmarks), Options menu with 5 toggles, Ctrl-X h chord, §14.1-§14.6 tables refreshed (~93% MC parity)

See PLAN.md for the comprehensive quality assessment and remaining tasks.