GitHub - ddanila/vc: Historical Volkov Commander archives and source snapshots

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This repository preserves a small set of historical Volkov Commander artifacts.

Note: The master branch is frozen for historical reference and will not be updated. Active work — including the build pipeline, fixes, and any pull requests — happens on the build branch.

Authorship and disclaimer

All source code and other work present on the master branch was created solely by Vsevolod Volkov, the original author of Volkov Commander. The owner of this repository is not an author or contributor to that work and has only published the existing sources on GitHub to preserve them as historical artifacts. No claim of authorship is made over any material on the master branch.

Historical context

In correspondence with Danila Sukharev on May 1, 2026, Vsevolod Volkov described the origin of Volkov Commander:

Initially, the program was conceived simply as a joke: a tiny assembler program that looked like NC 3.0, whose only function was to list directory contents. Then, in my spare time, I added individual functions: copying, viewing, and so on. After a while, I had something usable. Moreover, on those PC/XT-class computers, the program ran significantly faster and took up less precious RAM. I began developing it for my own use. Other users noticed the program, and it began to spread around the world. Back then, it didn't have its own name. Users came up with the name Volkov Commander.

Layout

  • archives/ contains the original ZIP files, retained as provenance.
  • archives/vc005.zip is an early binary-only/reference build.
  • versions/4.05/ contains the extracted source tree from vc405.zip.
  • versions/4.99.09/ contains the extracted source tree from vc49909.zip.

Git records the snapshot commit and tag dates from the newest timestamp inside each source archive. Per-file modification times are preserved in the original ZIP archives, but not in Git checkouts.

License

The source snapshots include the original license text in LICENSE.TXT:

  • versions/4.05/LICENSE.TXT
  • versions/4.99.09/LICENSE.TXT