DEV Community: Claus Valca

Why I Built Total Connect: A Modern Open-Source FileZilla & Total Commander Alternative in Go

Claus Valca — Fri, 16 Oct 2026 12:20:27 +0000

For decades, FileZilla and Total Commander have been staples for sysadmins, developers, and power users. But let’s be honest:

FileZilla paywalls essential cloud protocols (S3, Google Drive, OneDrive) behind a commercial Pro license.
Managing files on remote headless servers or mobile devices without X11/GUI forwarding is still a headache.
Security and plaintext password storage have historically plagued legacy FTP clients.

To solve this, I built Total Connect — a modern, unified, open-source file manager and transfer ecosystem written in Go, powered natively by rclone.

🌟 What makes Total Connect different?

Tri-Interface Architecture (TUI + Web + CLI):
- Interactive Terminal UI: Powered by Charmbracelet (bubbletea, lipgloss) featuring classic dual-pane navigation, Total Commander shortcuts (F5, F6, F8), and multi-file selection.
- Headless Web Daemon: An embedded, responsive web interface that runs on any remote machine, VPS, or Google Colab, featuring a modern Fluent design and touch tabs for mobile browsers.
- Scriptable CLI: For quick headless operations.
50+ Cloud Providers via Rclone:
Rather than wrapping rclone via subprocesses, Total Connect imports rclone directly as internal Go modules. This enables true atomic operations, password obfuscation, and zero-overhead transfers.
No Setup Friction:
- Single static binary for Linux, macOS, and Windows (Intel & ARM).
- In-app "+ Add Connection" wizard for FTP, SFTP, WebDAV, S3, Mega, and Google Drive without editing config files.

🚀 Try it out:

Grab the latest v0.1.0 release:
👉 GitHub Repository: https://github.com/M5Devs/Total-Connect
📦 Releases & Binaries: https://github.com/M5Devs/Total-Connect/releases/tag/v0.1.0

I'd love to hear your feedback, feature requests, and contributions! Let me know what you think in the comments below.

Building OpenROM v3.8.0: Adding Opt-In Online Features to an Offline-First App

Claus Valca — Mon, 05 Oct 2026 11:27:32 +0000

We just shipped v3.8.0 of OpenROM — a free, open-source
retro gaming toolkit built with Flutter + Dart.

From day one, OpenROM was designed to be 100% offline.
No telemetry, no accounts, no network requests. But users
kept asking for two things: auto-update notifications and
RetroAchievements hash verification.

The challenge: how do you add online features to an
offline-first app without betraying its core philosophy?

The approach

Every online feature is:

Disabled by default (false in SharedPreferences)
Requires explicit user opt-in in Settings
Fails silently — never blocks offline functionality
Clearly documented in SECURITY.md

abstract class OnlinePrefs {
  static const String autoUpdateEnabled = 
    'online_auto_update_enabled';  // default: false
  static const String raEnabled = 
    'online_ra_enabled';           // default: false
}

Auto-update check

Simple GitHub releases API call on startup (if enabled):

static Future<UpdateCheckResult> checkForUpdate(
    String currentVersion) async {
  try {
    final response = await http.get(
      Uri.parse(_repoApi),
      headers: {'Accept': 'application/vnd.github+json'},
    ).timeout(Duration(seconds: 10));
    // compare semver, return result
  } catch (e) {
    return UpdateCheckResult(error: e.toString()); // fail silently
  }
}

No auto-install. Just a banner. User clicks download
themselves.

RetroAchievements hash lookup

MD5 the ROM file, hit the RA API, show a badge on the
ROM card:

Future<RaHashResult> lookupHash(String filePath) async {
  final hash = await computeMd5(filePath);
  // hit retroachievements.org/API/API_GetGameInfoByMD5.php
  // return result — never throws
}

This solves a real pain point: downloading a 4GB PS2 ISO
only to discover achievements are USA-only. Now OpenROM
tells you before you convert.

Stack

Flutter + Dart — cross-platform GUI + core logic
Dart monorepo — core/ package + gui/ app
No Python, no Nuitka — pure Dart = zero AV false positives
GPL v3

Links

GitHub: https://github.com/M5Devs/OpenROM
Latest release: v3.8.0

What's your approach to adding online features to
offline-first apps? Happy to discuss in the comments.

I’m in High School and I Built VBX: A Modern, Compiled Successor to Visual Basic 6

Claus Valca — Mon, 28 Sep 2026 20:09:31 +0000

Hey DEV Community! 👋

Remember the 90s and early 2000s? You'd open a simple program, drag a button onto a form, write a couple of readable lines of code, hit Run, and a real, working .exe popped up instantly on your screen.

No 500MB of node_modules. No broken Python virtual environments. No 40GB Visual Studio installation. Just pure, unadulterated programming joy.

Microsoft killed Visual Basic 6 back in 2008. But as a high school student who fell in love with that retro, productive paradigm, I decided to spend my nights building a modern answer for 2026: Meet VBX (Visual Basic X) ⚡.

🏛️ What is VBX?

VBX is not a toy interpreter running inside Python.

It’s an open-source, high-performance compiler written in pure Go that translates clean, human-readable Basic syntax directly into standard C99. The generated C code is then compiled via GCC or Clang with -O2 optimizations into a standalone native binary with zero runtime dependencies.

.vbx Source Code ➔ [ VBX Parser (Go) ] ➔ Standard C99 Code ➔ [ GCC/Clang -O2 ] ➔ Native Binary (.exe)

💻 A Quick Taste of VBX

Here’s an interactive program in VBX that takes user input, shows native OS popups, and writes data to disk:

' Interactive App in VBX
Dim userName = InputBox("Please enter your name:", "Registration")

' Display native OS alert (Windows, Mac, or Linux)
MsgBox "Hello, " & userName & "! Saving your data...", "Welcome"

' Native File I/O
Dim logFile = "user_data.txt"
File.Write logFile, "Registered User: " & userName

' Read it back and verify
Dim savedContent = File.Read(logFile)
MsgBox "Verified from file: " & savedContent, "Success"

You run it with:

vbx run app.vbx

Or compile a release binary ready to distribute:

vbx build app.vbx -o my_app

⚡ Under the Hood (The Engineering)

As someone passionate about systems programming, I wanted VBX to be rock-solid:

Zero External Dependencies in Compiler: The Go compiler relies strictly on Go's standard library (bufio, strings, regexp, os/exec).
Memory Safety (No Heap Leaks): Instead of naive malloc calls for string concatenation, the generated C runtime uses a static ring-buffer memory pool (vbx_alloc_str)—a technique borrowed from classic game engines (like Doom). It chews through 10,000 loop iterations with flat, zero-leak memory usage.
Multi-Pass Type Inference: Evaluates expression types across AST passes to emit clean C function signatures and format specifiers (long long, double, const char*).
42 Test Suites: Tested end-to-end with unit, integration, and nested-block stress tests.
GPLv3 with a Runtime Exception: The compiler remains free software forever, but applications compiled with VBX are 100% yours to distribute or sell under any license you choose.

👧 Meet Our Mascot: BASIC-Chan!

Every great language needs a soul. We designed BASIC-Chan—a cyberpunk anime tech girl holding a glowing holographic floppy disk and a floating retro "Click Me" button, matching our neon cyan and purple aesthetic!

🎨 Tooling & VS Code Extension

We didn't want to stop at the CLI. We’ve already built a full multi-editor ecosystem:

The Official VS Code Extension is already live on the Visual Studio Marketplace (works in the browser on vscode.dev too!).
Syntax highlighting packages available for JetBrains IDEs, Sublime Text, Notepad++, Vim, Neovim, Emacs, and Micro.

🌟 What's Next?

Our next big milestone is VBX Studio: a dedicated, lightweight, cross-platform visual IDE with a true drag-and-drop form designer, just like the classic 90s RAD tools we all miss.

As Linus Torvalds famously once said: "Just a hobby, won't be big and professional..." 😉

⭐ GitHub Repository: [https://github.com/M5Devs/vbx]
🎨 Editors Repository: [https://github.com/M5Devs/vbx-editors]

I'd genuinely love to hear your thoughts, feedback, and what features you'd like to see in VBX! Let me know in the comments below! ❤️