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Exa Is Deprecated

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Re: Exa Is Deprecated

#191

Post by sanderjd »

saurik wrote: post #105
sanderjd wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

YMMV, but many of us find it easier to maintain rust + cargo than the old C + autotools mess.

FWIW, my mileage definitely varied: autotools--which is quite easy if you bother to learn how it works and is then almost infinitely flexible--has pretty much never failed me (I think there was one incident for a while related to building stuff for iOS? regardless this was fixed long ago), but I have had to file and participate in a number of bugs on cargo, most of which are still open :/, and I haven't even develope…

We'll just have to agree to disagree about autotools :) But I feel like I did try to bother to learn how it works, but nonetheless failed, and I think you're right that it is almost infinitely flexible, but I think that is not a good thing.

Agreed that cargo has bugs and I hope it improves over time (granted: it is not at all new). But say what you want about cargo, at least it's an ethos!

Re: Exa Is Deprecated

#192

Post by t43562 »

jjice wrote: post #152
t43562 wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the problem with all tools outside the most basic and you have to keep muscle memory for grep and ls to deal with it. Thus the fancy replacement tools have a cost. I can bear to pay that cost for "fd" (fdfind) and ripgrep but exa didn't really offer me enough.

I used to subscribe to this idea too, but I've since tried to leave it behind. I ended up just not using tools that gave me a benefit the majority of the time. Ripgrep is a great example. So much better than grep IMO but not going to be on that remote machine. When I need to, I'll adapt to egrep. Same with vim plugins. I ended up just not using stuff I liked so I wouldn't get used to it. Felt backwards to me. If you…

There was a time when I was working on AIX, Solaris and HPUx as well as Linux. In that situation it paid to install gnu tools everywhere (especially bash, make and sed!!) or build versions of them in my home dir so I could have them on any machine.

In THAT situation the constant pain of differences in behaviour was reduced by selecting a common nonstandard tool. It is really the same argument that you're making: that being able to work roughly the same everywhere has great value.

Re: Exa Is Deprecated

#193

Post by KingMob »

sremani wrote: post #128
mpalmer wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That isn't a metaphor; maybe you mean irony.

Lindy effect. ls is likely to be around 40 years from now since its already been around 40 years (I am assuming it's been around since 80s correct me if I am wrong). The practices of project sustenance are already baked in, where as new projects like exa/eza have to figure out and put these practices in place to be around for that long. We have a phrase "test of time" for a good reason.

Ummm, your comment is true, but unrelated to the parent comment you're responding to.

They're saying the word "metaphor" is incorrect, and that the original comment is describing "irony".

Re: Exa Is Deprecated

#194

Post by benrutter »

Night_Thastus wrote: post #167
arjvik wrote: post #4

I've been using LSD instead of Exa, so I'm lightly relieved that I don't have to change over. Both projects are amazing little utilities that when combined with a well-customized shell, really make using the terminal a joy. I absolutely love the trend of rewriting classic Unix utilities in rust, because the new tools often have (small or large) usability and quality of life improvements that altogether make the termi…

I want to like LSD. I really, really, REALLY do. But holy hell is getting a working font a nightmare. I spent multiple days desperately trying to figure out font issues, because LSD refuses to list what fonts actually work for it. And if you just use something from Nerd Fonts thinking it will work (which is what LSD recommends, btw), you'll find that 3/4 or more are missing some stupid symbol or another that LSD uses…

Sounds like you probably don't want any more headaches setting up LSD, but in case anyone else is reading this, LSD will let you specify in a config to use unicode symbols, or none at all, instead of nerd font style icons which would avoid your font issues

Re: Exa Is Deprecated

#195

Post by sanderjd »

bachmeier wrote: post #98
sanderjd wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes but people did not find it daunting to create a fork. But if what the comment I replied to meant by "capable of maintaining them myself" was about having an organizational structure where they could become an official maintainer of the official project rather than needing to fork it if the owner becomes unavailable, then yep, that's a great point about these single-owner projects. But my original interpretation w…

Your interpretation is what I intended. Thing is, I don't anticipate ever needing to touch the code if I use the utilities installed by default on whatever Linux distribution I'm using (which includes Windows, which I use as an interface for WSL). Even if I was comfortable with Rust, which I'm not and haven't used in years, it would still take a lot of time to understand the code well enough to make changes.

Yeah, I totally get the longevity argument. But that precludes any useful new tools, and I'm personally never happy with the status quo; I don't think the software developers of the 60s and 70s discovered the perfect final set of useful userspace tools. And none of them would have thought they had either, and would have scoffed at the idea of being stuck indefinitely on a static set of commands. Their whole philosophy was about making it easy to make and cobble together little tools like this!

But in practice, the tooling for making those tools never got very good. (That is, in my opinion - there is at least one commenter here who replied to me about actually liking autotools, which is fair enough, just not my opinion.)

So while fully recognizing the value of the old tools that will always exist, for new useful tools, I'm very happy to see this renaissance of writing them in rust. In my opinion, it is much easier to build them, dig into their implementation, and contribute to them (especially without introducing security vulnerabilities or data races).

Where I do absolutely agree, and what I do wish for is that more of this were being done under the auspices of an organization, like how the `ls` most of us are using is likely maintained by either GNU or one of the BSD organizations.

Re: Exa Is Deprecated

#196

Post by sanderjd »

diarrhea wrote: post #130
noobermin wrote: post #88

A nice metaphor when the "modern replacement" for something as basic as a directory listing is deprecated while the original means (the built-in ls) still works fine and isnt. EDIT: ls on linux is apparently an executable part of GNU and not a built-in

`ls` doesn't have a 'parent' in the hierarchy. `exa` does, it's `ls` itself, so there's a fallback. When there's no fallback, it cannot be deprecated; there's nothing to use otherwise. So it's either kept alive or forked indefinitely.

`ls` does have a 'parent' in the hierarchy: the system calls used to implement directory listings. If `ls` were deprecated (eg. if GNU decided to deprecate it and GNU/Linux distributions actually decided to go along with that), then you or someone else would need to write a new implementation using the system calls, in order to have a useful system.

Re: Exa Is Deprecated

#197

Post by JohnFen »

bachmeier wrote: post #37
arjvik wrote: post #4

I've been using LSD instead of Exa, so I'm lightly relieved that I don't have to change over. Both projects are amazing little utilities that when combined with a well-customized shell, really make using the terminal a joy. I absolutely love the trend of rewriting classic Unix utilities in rust, because the new tools often have (small or large) usability and quality of life improvements that altogether make the termi…

> I absolutely love the trend of rewriting classic Unix utilities I avoid them unless I'm capable of maintaining them myself. My primary reason for using classic Unix utilities is trusting that they'll still work in a few years. The initial stages of a rewrite can be a lot of fun, but I want to use it long after the excitement has worn off.

> My primary reason for using classic Unix utilities is trusting that they'll still work in a few years

Mine is that they're ubiquitous and I can rely on them existing on all Unices. For the same reason, I avoid getting used to any features that are unique to a particular platform or distribution. It just causes additional friction when I'm working on a different system.

Re: Exa Is Deprecated

#198

Post by DiabloD3 »

Night_Thastus wrote: post #178
seabrookmx wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> command prompt You could use Windows Terminal instead? Or does it have the same issue?

As far as I know, Command Prompt, Powershell, WSL, etc all use the same underlying font system, TTF. And not many fonts have a TTF version. If you try using an OTF it won't be detected.

There are many incorrect statements in this.

None of those three "use" anything.

On machines that predate the new ConPTY replacement mechanism (so, everything before Win11), any app that is a command line program (such as cmd.exe, Powershell, anything compiled to be a console program and not a GUI program (this can be any program, and is chosen at compile time)), it is ConPTY.

ConPTY can see OTF fonts (afaik, I remember that working, I don't have a system old enough to check), but can't see any fonts that are in your user font directory (%LOCALAPPDATA%\Microsoft\Windows\Fonts).

As of Win11, however, ConPTY (which has been in existence since NT4, and has been an ugly pain in the ass for just as long) has been replaced with a mechanism to allow you to chose which one you want: a user supplied terminal that can supply that dependency (currently only Microsoft Terminal, but it is documented so any terminal can do it), or a ConPTY replacement owned by the Terminal team (which is basically the renderer and parser ripped out of Terminal, and a massive in-place upgrade, while still looking and acting like ConPTY otherwise). If the old ConPTY can't see OTF fonts (which would stem from using the oldest and most classic font API still in Windows), the new one can (as it uses DirectWrite).

On Win11 machines set to use Terminal instead of new-ConPTY, launching cmd.exe, Powershell, WSL.exe, or any other console program, will launch Terminal to display itself if not already in a console session.

However, fundamentally, for the entire conversation preceding this, it doesn't matter if a font is TTF or OTF for the purposes of supplying Unicode or Nerdfonts icons. OTF only matters if you want Type1-style glyphs (cubic Bézier curves vs quadratic) or want to use OTF features (which aren't meaningful for terminals, generally).

Re: Exa Is Deprecated

#199

Post by benrutter »

dahfizz wrote: post #49

Yet another example of why I don't trust any software that markets itself as "modern". In another 20 years, ls will still work perfectly fine.

I've seen this take a lot in the thread but I don't really get it. Exa is a drop in ls replacement- if it breaks (which it hasn't), go back to using ls? As long as there's a reliable built in, I'm pretty happy having the possibility of needing to switch it out for some added convenience.

Re: Exa Is Deprecated

#200

Post by Night_Thastus »

DiabloD3 wrote: post #198
Night_Thastus wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As far as I know, Command Prompt, Powershell, WSL, etc all use the same underlying font system, TTF. And not many fonts have a TTF version. If you try using an OTF it won't be detected.

There are many incorrect statements in this. None of those three "use" anything. On machines that predate the new ConPTY replacement mechanism (so, everything before Win11), any app that is a command line program (such as cmd.exe, Powershell, anything compiled to be a console program and not a GUI program (this can be any program, and is chosen at compile time)), it is ConPTY. ConPTY can see OTF fonts (afaik, I remem…

You're missing the point I was making.

* Windows shells (at least for me, right now) won't DETECT a .otf font. You can't even choose to use it in the options of powershell/prompt/etc

* Most nerd fonts don't bother to convert to TTF. They only provide an OTF.

Even if they're fundamentally the same that doesn't matter if Windows won't detect it in the first place to let you select it.

This ConPTY replacement ('Windows Terminal') sounds fairly recent, so I think you'll forgive me if I didn't know about it. Our work machines only updated to Windows 11 in the last couple of days.

In any case, without access to the store I can't install it anyways. Nice for those who are on 11 already and have access though.

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