Sophos Cloud Optix
You know you want to.
Actually, you know you DON’T want to – I certainly didn’t.
But you will anyway – I did.
Microsoft has released the File Manager program from Windows 3, which was released back in 1990.
When I say “released”, I mean “set free”, and that’s free in the threefold sense of speech, beer and download.
Yes, the venerable WinFile application is now open source software!
To kick off with an admission: I’ve never got on with single-pane file managers – from WinFile to the latest Mac Finder, I’ve always shoved them to one side in favour of two-panel viewers.
Why view one directory at a time when you so often want to view two, either to move files from A to B (or in the Windows world, probably from D: to C:), or to compare old and new versions of stuff?
As a result, I’ve always had a copy of Midnight Commander to hand on Mac and Linux boxen, as well as Servant Salamander back when I used Windows as a matter of routine. (I chose that last word very carefully to avoid giving the impression that it was a matter of choice.)
In truth, I never much liked Windows 3, and when I used it, I didn’t like WinFile at all.
WinFile made tasks that were somewhat complicated but perfectly reliable at the DOS prompt into tasks that were dead easy but liable to go weirdly wrong when moving clunky icons between two separate on-screen windows.
But time is a great healer.
Let’s be fair
WinFile was written for Windows, so it’s hardly surprising that it was written to use windows…
…and, to be fair, by opening two WinFile windows inside the main window, you could use it as a two-panel viewer anyway.
In other words: WinFile wasn’t actually that bad, and seen through the rose-tinted glasses of computer history, you’ll eventually realise, like me, that you want to bring it back to life.
Doing so was a lot easier that I thought.
First, I downloaded Visual Studio Community 2017 and did a basic, default install.
OK, there was about 1.3GB to download, and it took up more than 6GB when installed – but it was still 1,000,000 times easier (not to mention infinity times cheaper, given that it’s free) than setting up Microsoft’s developer tools and SDKs (software development kits) in the 1990s.
Second, I downloaded the WinFile source code from GitHub – I chose the code tagged original_plus to get the most authentic old-school experience.
Third, after unzipping the source, I opened the file winfile-original_plus\src\Winfile.vcxproj.
Fourth, I chose the build options Release - x64 and hit Ctrl-Shift-B (Build Solution) to build the app.
(You can skip step #4 – I tried it to see what would happen, but the 64-bit native build failed dismally with a cascade of errors.)
Fifth, I switched to Release - Win32 for a 32-bit executable instead, and did another build.
Sixth, well, there isn’t a sixth, because the build succeeded, leaving me with a 264KB program called WinFile.exe, ready to run.
There you have it
And there you have it: because you can.
There’s simply no other reason you need.
Which is just as well, because there is no other reason.
I love it. Paul that’s brilliant. All I need now is x tree gold…
Are you allowed to post the binary? Or at least the hashes?
The hash of my build will be different from yours because the compiler puts a timestamp into the file, even if all the other compiler options are the same and all the Visual Studio components on our computers are identical.
Woot! Now we can analyze Microsoft coding practices, and maybe try running a Mosaic browser.
Duck wrote “Why view one directory at a time when you so often want to view two, either to move files from A to B (or in the Windows world, probably from D: to C:), or to compare old and new versions of stuff?”
I always simply opened two instances of the file explorer and used either drag-and-drop or copy-and-paste between them. It was obvious to do it that way.
Another question: Is the version you built Y2K-compliant?
You can see 2018 datestamps correctly displayed in the screenshot…so I’ll hazard a guess that it’s Y2K-safe :-) (The Y2Kishness ought to be down to the underlying OS and filing system, because the dates and times on the files are those stored and provided by the OS and filing system.)
I’ve been wanting this since it vanished from Windows. Yay.
Non standard plural of box. Neither correct or incorrect. Pretentious, maybe. I know I can be.
Stop making me fixate!!
Nice article, wordsmith.
nyk
How can you be sure it wasn’t a typo :-)
Because A) the N and S keys are fairly far separated on the standard keyboard, and B) the word “boxen” appeared in your comment, and while you are known to publish typos with some regularity, you are also well known for flexing your vocabularius maximus muscles. 😉
“The lady doth protest too much, methinks.”
Why ?..I have windows 3.1,95, 98,ME,6 XP’s,2 windows 7. why have this on windows 7 ? may look nice ?
The answer is at the end of the article.
Someone hates fun
Informative article, though I hope I’ll be forgiven for being a touch less excited than when Id Software similarly sent their venerable Quake out to pasture.
:,)
Mental. Did you have something boring and tedious that you were prevaricating about?
So I’m able to access my linux files inside WSL via %LocalAppData%\lxss
from that 90s Windows File Manager on a W10?
There’s only one way to find out.
Search for the word “First” in the article above :-)
Isn’t the point of open source that you can modify the code to suit yourself?
There seems to be no point in just compiling it unaltered, unless you are trying to fill a column without the need to write anything of interest.
For most people I’d say that the main point of open source is that it’s available for ever and for free. So you can , and you may, modify the code if you want, but I would hazard a guess that between 990 and 999 out of 1000 builds of FLOSS source code packages are of the “DOT SLASH configure SEMICOLON make” sort, where the downloaded sources are built out of the box, with the code unmodified.
For my part, even if I want to fetch a FLOSS project with the ultimate aim of tweaking it to suit myself, my first action is always to try a vanilla build of the unaltered package, just to see how clean and reliable the default build process is.
(In this case, one reason for building it from source is that Microsoft officially distributes it in source form, so the official way to get a binary version is to build your own. Oh, and the other reason for building it…
…is at the end of the article.)