A modern replacement for ‘ls’.
Go to file
2017-06-29 14:03:17 +01:00
contrib Update the docs where it counts 2017-06-29 13:24:55 +01:00
src Update the docs where it counts 2017-06-29 13:24:55 +01:00
xtests Add sort tests for name and ext and lowercase 2017-06-29 14:03:17 +01:00
.gitignore Switch to an Ubuntu Vagrant image 2017-04-28 19:36:42 +01:00
.travis.yml Replace the testcases script with a Vagrant VM 2016-10-07 19:31:03 +01:00
Cargo.lock Fix bug where colours were incorrectly applied 2017-06-25 14:51:44 +01:00
Cargo.toml Fix bug where colours were incorrectly applied 2017-06-25 14:51:44 +01:00
LICENCE Update LICENCE 2014-07-02 22:07:09 +01:00
Makefile Use pkg-config for FISHDIR/BASHDIR 2017-05-16 15:20:31 -07:00
README.md Update the docs where it counts 2017-06-29 13:24:55 +01:00
screenshots.png Update screenshots 2015-11-23 19:48:30 +00:00
Vagrantfile Upcase some of the extension testcases 2017-06-29 13:57:31 +01:00

exa Build status

exa is a replacement for ls written in Rust.

Screenshots

Screenshots of exa

Options

exas options are similar, but not exactly the same, as ls.

Display Options

  • -1, --oneline: display one entry per line
  • -G, --grid: display entries as a grid (default)
  • -l, --long: display extended details and attributes
  • -R, --recurse: recurse into directories
  • -T, --tree: recurse into directories as a tree
  • -x, --across: sort the grid across, rather than downwards
  • --colo[u]r: when to use terminal colours
  • --colo[u]r-scale: highlight levels of file sizes distinctly

Filtering Options

  • -a, --all: show hidden and 'dot' files
  • -d, --list-dirs: list directories like regular files
  • -L, --level=(depth): limit the depth of recursion
  • -r, --reverse: reverse the sort order
  • -s, --sort=(field): which field to sort by
  • --group-directories-first: list directories before other files
  • -I, --ignore-glob=(globs): glob patterns (pipe-separated) of files to ignore

Pass the --all option twice to also show the . and .. directories.

Long View Options

These options are available when running with --long (-l):

  • -b, --binary: list file sizes with binary prefixes

  • -B, --bytes: list file sizes in bytes, without any prefixes

  • -g, --group: list each file's group

  • -h, --header: add a header row to each column

  • -H, --links: list each file's number of hard links

  • -i, --inode: list each file's inode number

  • -m, --modified: use the modified timestamp field

  • -S, --blocks: list each file's number of file system blocks

  • -t, --time=(field): which timestamp field to use

  • -u, --accessed: use the accessed timestamp field

  • -U, --created: use the created timestamp field

  • -@, --extended: list each file's extended attributes and sizes

  • --git: list each file's Git status, if tracked

  • Valid --color options are always, automatic, and never.

  • Valid sort fields are accessed, created, extension, Extension, inode, modified, name, Name, size, and none. Fields starting with a capital letter are case-sensitive.

  • Valid time fields are modified, accessed, and created.

Installation

exa is written in Rust. Once you have it set up, a simple make install will compile exa and install it into /usr/local/bin.

exa depends on libgit2 for certain features. If youre unable to compile libgit2, you can opt out of Git support by running cargo build --release --no-default-features.

Cargo Install

If youre using a recent version of Cargo (0.5.0 or higher), you can use the cargo install command:

cargo install --git https://github.com/ogham/exa

or:

cargo install --no-default-features --git https://github.com/ogham/exa

Cargo will clone the repository to a temporary directory, build it there and place the exa binary to: $HOME/.cargo (and can be overridden by setting the --root option).

Testing with Vagrant

exa uses Vagrant to configure virtual machines for testing.

Programs such as exa that are basically interfaces to the system are notoriously difficult to test. Although the internal components have unit tests, its impossible to do a complete end-to-end test without mandating the current users name, the time zone, the locale, and directory structure to test. (And yes, these tests are worth doing. I have missed an edge case on more than one occasion.)

The initial attempt to solve the problem was just to create a directory of “awkward” test cases, run exa on it, and make sure it produced the correct output. But even this output would change if, say, the users locale formats dates in a different way. These can be mocked inside the code, but at the cost of making that code more complicated to read and understand.

An alternative solution is to fake everything: create a virtual machine with a known state and run the tests on that. This is what Vagrant does. Although it takes a while to download and set up, it gives everyone the same development environment to test for any obvious regressions.

First, initialise the VM:

host$ vagrant up

The first command downloads the virtual machine image, and then runs our provisioning script, which installs Rust, exas dependencies, configures the environment, and generates some awkward files and folders to use as test cases. This takes some time, but it does write to output occasionally. Once this is done, you can SSH in, and build and test:

host$ vagrant ssh
vm$ cd /vagrant
vm$ cargo build
vm$ ./xtests/run
All the tests passed!

Running without Vagrant

Of course, the drawback of having a standard development environment is that you stop noticing bugs that occur outside of it. For this reason, Vagrant isnt a necessary development step — its there if youd like to use it, but exa still gets used and tested on other platforms. It can still be built and compiled on any target triple that it supports, VM or no VM, with cargo build and cargo test.