I really love all the "modern" takes on classic tools by the Rust community.
I'm using eza (aka exa), aliased as ls, which has "tree" built in (aliased as lt), amongst others, as replacement for "ls" and it's one of my biggest production boosts in daily commandline use. Because eza has the tree built in, and the tree is also insanely fast, I won't be needing this tool - yet. Maybe one day the interactive mode will pull me over.
Congrats on releasing. And kudo's to how well you've released it: solid README, good description, good-looking gifs with exactly the right feature highlights
You still end up having to turn it into a GIF if you want it to autoplay on GitHub's markdown viewer, or video if you want it to run on the page but require a click-to-play.
Second off, I didn't realize how deep the dep tree would be for this type of program -- 141 total! So much of it is the url crate, itself a dep of the git crate, but there's a bunch of others too. I'm just getting into learning Rust -- is this typical of Rust projects or perhaps typical of TUI projects in general?
(EDIT to strikeout) ~~The binary is also 53M as a result whereas /usr/sbin/tree is 80K on my machine -- not really a problem on today's storage, but very roughly 500-1000x different in size isn't nothing.~~
Maybe it's linking-related? I don't know how to check really.
(EDIT: many have pointed out that you can run `cargo build --release` with other options to get a much smaller binary. Thanks for teaching me!)
Stripping the binary further improves it to 2.9M, and some further optimizations get it to 2.2M without any compromise to performance. (You can get it smaller by optimizing for size, but I wouldn't recommend that unless you really do value size more than performance.)
Most shells dynamically link to a runtime your OS provides "for free". The 4.3 MiB binary in question is bundling the Rust runtime and its dependencies.
For reference, a statically-compiled C++ "Hello, World" is 2.2 MiB after stripping.
By switching to e.g. musl, you can go down to a single megabyte ;)
But in all seriousness, my example is quite cherrypicked, since nobody will actually statically link glibc. And even if they did, one can make use of link-time optimization to remove lots of patches of unused code. Note that this is the same strategy one would employ to debloat their Rust binaries. (Use LTO, don't aggressively inline code, etc.)
For reference, some statically-linked shells on my system:
2288K /bin/bash-static (per manual, "too big and too slow")
1936K /bin/busybox-static (including tools not just the shell)
192K /usr/lib/klibc/bin/mksh
2456K zsh-static
For comparison, some dynamically-linked binaries (some old)
(The reason I don't have static binaries handy is because they no longer run on modern systems. As long as you aren't using shitty libraries, dynamic binaries are more portable and reliable, contrary to internet "wisdom".)
Among the features it has: an interactive terminal GUI, threaded parallel directory walking, and git repository support. In around a thousand lines of code, total, including tests, half of which is the GUI.
I did some benchmarks on one of our CLI and found that `opt-level = "z"` reduced the size from 2.68M to 2.28M, and shaved 10% on the build time, worth a try.
I'll try with `panic = "abort"` for our next release, thanks for the reminder.
You are probably looking at a debug build. On Linux, a release build (cargo build -r) is ~4.3M, and down to ~3.5M once stripped. This could be reduced further with some tricks applied to the release build profile.
Is It though? You won't get it on an embedded device (maybe) but you could install a thousand of these tools and barely even notice the space being taken up on most machines
I think that’s a lame argument. First because it’s kind of a fallacy. Size is absolute not relative to something. Especially for software. No one thinks of software size primarily in the context of their disk space.
Further I think everyone keeps getting larger and larger memory because software keeps getting more and more bloated.
I remember when 64gb iPhone was more than enough (I don’t take pictures so just apps and data)
Now my 128 is getting uncomfortable due to the os and app sizes. My next phone likely will be a 256
I’m usually the first to complain about bloat but your counterpoints to the GPs “lame arguments” are themselves, fallacies.
> First because it’s kind of a fallacy. Size is absolute not relative to something. Especially for software. No one thinks of software size primarily in the context of their disk space.
That’s exactly how most people think about file sizes.
When your disk is full, you don’t delete the smallest files first. You delete the biggest.
> Further I think everyone keeps getting larger and larger memory because software keeps getting more and more bloated.
RAM sizes have actually stagnated over the last decade.
> I remember when 64gb iPhone was more than enough (I don’t take pictures so just apps and data) Now my 128 is getting uncomfortable due to the os and app sizes. My next phone likely will be a 256
That’s because media sizes increase, not executable sizes.
And people do want higher resolution cameras, higher definition videos, improved audio quality, etc. These are genuinely desirable features.
Couple that with improved internet bandwidth allowing for content providers to push higher bitrate media, however the need to still locally cache media.
200MB apps wouldn’t even make a dent on a 64GB device.
The 2GB apps are usually so large because they include high quality media assets. For example, Spotify will frequently consumer multiple GBs of storage but the vast majority of that is audio cache.
I’m intrigued, how many of them are actual 3rd party apps though? And how many are different layers around an existing app or part of Apple / Googles base OS? The latter, in fairness, consumes several GBs of storage too.
I’m not trying to dismiss your point here. Genuinely curious how you’ve accumulated so many app installs.
> No one thinks of software size primarily in the context of their disk space.
This is wrong. The reason why many old tools are so small was because you had far less space. If you have a 20tb harddrive you wouldn't care about whether ls took up 1kb or 2mb, on a 1gb harddrive it matters/ed much more.
Optimization takes time, I'm sure if OP wanted he could shrink the binary size by quite a lot but doing so has its costs and nowadays its rarely worth paying that since nobody even notices wether a program is 2kb or 2mb. It doesn't matter anymore in the age of 1TB bootdrives.
Try `cargo build --release --no-default-features` to get a much smaller binary (~5-10MB) - Rust statically links dependencies but supports conditional compilation for optional features.
Glancing at the Cargo.toml, the package doesn't define any features anyways. `cargo b --no-default-features` only applies to the packages you're building, not their dependencies -- that would lead to very unpredictable behavior
So after writing this to learn Rust, what are your thoughts on Rust? What do you especially like and dislike about it, or what were you surprised about?
I appreciate the ecosystem of packages that seem really well maintained. I don’t love the syntax and find Rust harder to read and learn so far compared to something like golang (I’m used to R which is not a compiled language but has a great dev community).
I do love the compiler and support tools built into Cargo (fmt, clippy, etc.).
That's been similar to my experience. The ecosystem is extremely polished and smooth, the build tools and package manager and IDE support, all of it. Especially compared to C++ which I cuold barely get working here.
I'm using eza (aka exa), aliased as ls, which has "tree" built in (aliased as lt), amongst others, as replacement for "ls" and it's one of my biggest production boosts in daily commandline use. Because eza has the tree built in, and the tree is also insanely fast, I won't be needing this tool - yet. Maybe one day the interactive mode will pull me over.
Congrats on releasing. And kudo's to how well you've released it: solid README, good description, good-looking gifs with exactly the right feature highlights
https://github.com/Canop/broot
I used vhs to record the gif which must not run the script in my native terminal! I’ll have to see about fixing it!
And with fuzzy matching built in? Just amazing. Good job OP.
Second off, I didn't realize how deep the dep tree would be for this type of program -- 141 total! So much of it is the url crate, itself a dep of the git crate, but there's a bunch of others too. I'm just getting into learning Rust -- is this typical of Rust projects or perhaps typical of TUI projects in general?
(EDIT to strikeout) ~~The binary is also 53M as a result whereas /usr/sbin/tree is 80K on my machine -- not really a problem on today's storage, but very roughly 500-1000x different in size isn't nothing.~~
Maybe it's linking-related? I don't know how to check really.
(EDIT: many have pointed out that you can run `cargo build --release` with other options to get a much smaller binary. Thanks for teaching me!)
That's a debug binary, and the vast majority of that is debug symbols. A release build of this project is 4.3M, an order of magnitude smaller.
Also, compiling out the default features of the git2 crate eliminates several dependencies and reduces it further to 3.6M.
https://github.com/bgreenwell/lstr/pull/5
https://github.com/rust-lang/git2-rs/pull/1168
Stripping the binary further improves it to 2.9M, and some further optimizations get it to 2.2M without any compromise to performance. (You can get it smaller by optimizing for size, but I wouldn't recommend that unless you really do value size more than performance.)
Most shells dynamically link to a runtime your OS provides "for free". The 4.3 MiB binary in question is bundling the Rust runtime and its dependencies.
For reference, a statically-compiled C++ "Hello, World" is 2.2 MiB after stripping.
The executable takes 33KB in C, 75KB in nim.
But in all seriousness, my example is quite cherrypicked, since nobody will actually statically link glibc. And even if they did, one can make use of link-time optimization to remove lots of patches of unused code. Note that this is the same strategy one would employ to debloat their Rust binaries. (Use LTO, don't aggressively inline code, etc.)
Rust binaries also dynamically link to and rely on this runtime.
I'll try with `panic = "abort"` for our next release, thanks for the reminder.
If you just think about how roughly (napkin math) 2MB can be 100k loc, that’s nuts
Further I think everyone keeps getting larger and larger memory because software keeps getting more and more bloated.
I remember when 64gb iPhone was more than enough (I don’t take pictures so just apps and data) Now my 128 is getting uncomfortable due to the os and app sizes. My next phone likely will be a 256
> First because it’s kind of a fallacy. Size is absolute not relative to something. Especially for software. No one thinks of software size primarily in the context of their disk space.
That’s exactly how most people think about file sizes.
When your disk is full, you don’t delete the smallest files first. You delete the biggest.
> Further I think everyone keeps getting larger and larger memory because software keeps getting more and more bloated.
RAM sizes have actually stagnated over the last decade.
> I remember when 64gb iPhone was more than enough (I don’t take pictures so just apps and data) Now my 128 is getting uncomfortable due to the os and app sizes. My next phone likely will be a 256
That’s because media sizes increase, not executable sizes.
And people do want higher resolution cameras, higher definition videos, improved audio quality, etc. These are genuinely desirable features.
Couple that with improved internet bandwidth allowing for content providers to push higher bitrate media, however the need to still locally cache media.
Part of it is app sizes on mobile. But it's apps in the 200mb - 2gb range that are the problem, not ones that single-digit megabytes.
The 2GB apps are usually so large because they include high quality media assets. For example, Spotify will frequently consumer multiple GBs of storage but the vast majority of that is audio cache.
I agree that the largest data use tends to be media assets.
I’m not trying to dismiss your point here. Genuinely curious how you’ve accumulated so many app installs.
This is wrong. The reason why many old tools are so small was because you had far less space. If you have a 20tb harddrive you wouldn't care about whether ls took up 1kb or 2mb, on a 1gb harddrive it matters/ed much more.
Optimization takes time, I'm sure if OP wanted he could shrink the binary size by quite a lot but doing so has its costs and nowadays its rarely worth paying that since nobody even notices wether a program is 2kb or 2mb. It doesn't matter anymore in the age of 1TB bootdrives.
What incentive does Apple have to help iOS devs get package sizes down, then?
Side-note: what theme are you using in the linked gif? It's right in the middle of my two favorite themes, onedark and gruvbox.
I do love the compiler and support tools built into Cargo (fmt, clippy, etc.).
[0]: https://github.com/solidiquis/erdtree [1]: https://github.com/Canop/broot