Blue Panels (bp)

A cross-platform Norton Commander clone built in Rust with Ratatui. Two-panel file manager with classic NC key bindings, built-in viewer and editor, command line, and configurable themes.

Features

• Two-panel file manager with 50/50 split, directory-first sorting, file size display
• Classic NC key bindings — F1-F10, Tab, Insert, Ctrl+O
• File operations — Copy (F5), Move (F6), Mkdir (F7), Delete (F8) with confirmation dialogs
• Built-in viewer (F3) — plain text with scroll, binary file detection
• Built-in editor (F4) — minimal text editor with save/quit menu
• Command line — type commands directly, output displayed in scrollable view
• Shell mode (Ctrl+O) — toggle panels to reveal the terminal
• Menu bar (F9) — sort order, view modes, swap panels, command history, config editor
• Configurable themes — NC blue default, customizable via TOML config
• Cross-platform — macOS, Linux, Windows

Install

cargo install --path .

Or build from source:

cargo build --release
./target/release/bp

Key Bindings

Navigation

Key	Action
Tab	Switch active panel
Up/Down	Move cursor
Home/End	Jump to first/last file
PgUp/PgDn	Page scroll
Enter	Open directory / execute file
Left	Parent directory

File Operations

Key	Action
F1	Help
F3	View file
F4	Edit file
F5	Copy to other panel
F6	Move/rename to other panel
F7	Create directory
F8	Delete
F9	Menu bar
F10	Quit

Other

Key	Action
Ctrl+O	Toggle shell mode
Ctrl+R	Refresh both panels
Insert	Toggle file selection
*	Invert selection

Configuration

Config file location:

• macOS/Linux: ~/.config/bp/config.toml
• Windows: %APPDATA%\bp\config.toml

Default theme (NC blue):

[theme]
panel_bg = "blue"
panel_fg = "white"
active_border = "cyan"
inactive_border = "dark_gray"
cursor_bg = "cyan"
cursor_fg = "black"
selected_fg = "yellow"
menu_bg = "cyan"
menu_fg = "black"
fkey_bar_bg = "cyan"
fkey_bar_fg = "black"
dialog_bg = "white"
dialog_fg = "black"

Colors use the 16 standard terminal color names for maximum compatibility.

Dependencies

Crate	Purpose
ratatui	TUI framework
crossterm	Terminal backend and input
dirs	Platform config paths
toml	Config file parsing
serde	Deserialization

License

MIT