rmw (ReMove to Waste) is a safe-remove utility for the command line. Its goal is to conform to the FreeDesktop.org Trash specification and therefore be compatible with KDE, GNOME, XFCE, and others. Desktop integration is optional however, and by default, rmw will only use a waste folder separated from your desktop trash. One of its unique features is the ability to purge files from your Waste/Trash directories after x number of days.
Web site: https://remove-to-waste.info/
- libncursesw (ncurses-devel on some systems, such as CentOS)
- gettext (or use --disable-nls if you only need English language support)
If you are building from source, you will need the libncursesw(5 or 6)-dev package from your operating system distribution. On some systems just the ncurses packages is needed, and it's often already installed.
Use ../configure --help to view available compile-time options.
mkdir build
cd build
../configure
make
If you would like to install rmw without superuser privileges, use a prefix that you have write access to. Example:
../configure --prefix=$HOME/usr
make
make install
The rmw binary will be installed to $HOME/usr/bin and documentation to
$HOME/usr/doc.
On OSX, ncursesw isn't provided by default but can be installed
using brew install ncurses. Then precede ./configure with
PKG_CONFIG_PATH="/usr/local/opt/ncurses/lib/pkgconfig" Example:
PKG_CONFIG_PATH="/usr/local/opt/ncurses/lib/pkgconfig" ../configure
If you can't use brew, or install libncursesw or
libmenuw some other way, rmw will use ncurses but you may experience
this minor
bug.
Note: rmw has been built on Windows 2 years ago using Cygwin but it didn't use the proper directories. We have no Windows developers working on this project and are hoping that some will join soon!. As stated in the description, the goal of this project is a "cross-platform" utility; so getting rmw to work reliably on Windows is still on the TODO list.
- make uninstall (uninstalls the program if installed with 'make install`)
- make distclean (removes files in the build directory created by
configureand 'make')
== First-time use ==
After rmw is installed, running `rmw` will create a configuration file
(rmwrc) in $HOME/.config (or $XDG_CONFIG_HOME). Edit the file as
desired.
== Configuration File ==
Documentation explaining the configuration can be found in your config
file.
Waste folders will be created automatically; e.g. if '$HOME/.local/share/Waste'
is uncommented in the config file, these 3 directories will be created:
$HOME/.local/share/Waste
$HOME/.local/share/Waste/files
$HOME/.local/share/Waste/info
If one of the WASTE folders is on removable media, then the user has the
option of appending ',removable'.
If a folder has ',removable' appended to it, rmw will not try to create
it; it must be initially created manually. If the folder exists when
rmw is run, it will be used; if not, it will be skipped. Once you
create "example_waste", rmw will automatically create
example_waste/info and example_waste/files
e.g: WASTE=/mnt/sda10000/example_waste, removable
== Features and Options ==
Usage: rmw [OPTION]... FILE...
ReMove the FILE(s) to a WASTE directory listed in configuration file
or: rmw -s
or: rmw -u
or: rmw -z FILE...
Restore FILE(s) from a WASTE directory
-h, --help
-c, --config filename use an alternate configuration
-l, --list list waste directories
-g, --purge run purge even if it's been run today
-o, --orphaned check for orphaned files (maintenance)
-f, --force allow purge to run
-e, --empty completely empty (purge) all waste folders
-v, --verbose increase output messages
-w, --warranty display warranty
-V, --version display version and license information
===] Restoring [===
-z, --restore <wildcard filename(s) pattern>
-s, --select select files from list to restore
-u, --undo-last undo last ReMove
== Purging ==
If purging is 'on', rmw will permanently delete files from the folders
specified in the configuration file after 'x' number of days. Purging can be
disabled by using 'purge_after = 0' in configuration file. rmw will only check
once per day if it's time to purge (use -g to check more often).
The time of the last automatic purge check is stored in `purge-time`,
located in $HOME/.local/share/rmw (or $XDG_DATA_HOME/rmw).
== -e, --empty ==
Completely empty (purge) all waste folders
== -u, --undo ==
Restores files that were last rmw'ed. No arguments for `-u` are
necessary. The list of files that were last rmw'ed is stored in `mrl`, located in
$HOME/.local/share/rmw (or $XDG_DATA_HOME/rmw).
== -z, --restore ==
To restore a file, or multiple files, specify the path to them in in the
<WASTE>/files folder (wildcards ok).
e.g. 'rmw -z ~/.local/share/Trash/files/foo*'
Files can also be restored using only the basename, from within any directory.
NOTE: That feature will not process wildcards unless the user is in a
<WASTE>/files folder and the filespec actually exists in the present working
directory.
== -f, --force ==
A change from previous versions, purge is allowed to run without the '-f'
option. If you'd rather require the use of '-f', you can add the line
'force_required' in your configuration file.
rmw will refuse to purge directories if they contain non-writable
subdirectories. You can use -f 2 times if you ever see a message that tells
you "permission denied; directory still contains files" (e.g. rwm -gff).