Exa Is Deprecated • Hacker News Board

Re: Exa Is Deprecated

#21

Post by KptMarchewa » Thu, Sep 07, 2023, 11:01 AM UTC

perihelions wrote: post #12

broodbucket wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have the opposite feeling about package lethargy, I don't want to remember that exa is now eza at the time that my distro finally gets around to packaging eza, I want to do it now when it's right in front of me. I'll go try lsd instead (and then I'll try the other ls rewrite, har har)

Ehh, I guess I'm your opposite. I want to be insulated from exciting upstream developments, especially for stable, boring stuff like coreutils. I want those to be boring. I don't want "exa is now eza" or whatever push-notified to my command line on a random Tuesday.

I want those to be boring for my scripts; I want modern replacements for my manual use.

Re: Exa Is Deprecated

#22

Post by post-factum » Thu, Sep 07, 2023, 11:04 AM UTC

broodbucket wrote: post #9

perihelions wrote: post #8

This might affect me and other Debian stable users in the year 2025. The conservative side of the FOSS world rocks . exa's great; it's a polished, feature-rich ls(1) that broadly improves on GNU ls. The --tree view is awesome; I wish more tools used that UX pattern. The only other one I can immediately remember is pstree.

I have the opposite feeling about package lethargy, I don't want to remember that exa is now eza at the time that my distro finally gets around to packaging eza, I want to do it now when it's right in front of me. I'll go try lsd instead (and then I'll try the other ls rewrite, har har)

In case you are an Arch user, eza is already there.

Re: Exa Is Deprecated

#23

Post by dystroy » Thu, Sep 07, 2023, 11:04 AM UTC

kbd wrote: post #13

I never used exa as a general `ls` replacement, but I did use it as a `tree` replacement. Its tree view that gives you file stats from ls alongside a `tree`-like view I haven't found replicated in any other tool. Here are the aliases I use: et() { exa -alT --git -I'.git|node_modules|.mypy_cache|.pytest_cache|.venv' --color=always "$@" | less -R; } alias et1='et -L1' alias et2='et -L2' alias et3='et -L3' exa never han…

Maybe use broot ? Its tree view is its main feature and it handles gitignore and shows many stats including dir sizes. https://dystroy.org/broot/

You can use it just like the original tree tool too: https://dystroy.org/broot/tricks/#replace-tree

(disclaimer: broot author)

Re: Exa Is Deprecated

#24

Post by cb321 » Thu, Sep 07, 2023, 11:04 AM UTC

torstenvl wrote: post #16

blueflow wrote: post #10

exa: 8 years, dead ls: 38 years and counting. Long live ls.

I like vanilla `ls` but I do miss some display options from GNU ls when I'm on Mac, e.g., grouping directories first. Luckily, of course, it's open source, so I just added the options I needed. https://github.com/torstenvl/betterls if anyone is interested exa seemed like overkill for my needs, and it was easier to add a couple lines of code than to learn a whole new tool.

It's also a whole other tool and in Nim to boot, but https://github.com/c-blake/lc allows you to group "dot-directories" before "dot-files" before "non-dot directories" before non-dot files.

There might be enough other new functionality such as abbreviation or multi-attribute colorization schemes to motivate learning a new tool. E.g., neither "dot-ness" nor "directory-ness" in the above is hard-coded. They could be any other convenient elements of the typology / taxonomy.

Re: Exa Is Deprecated

#25

Post by minorannoyance2 » Thu, Sep 07, 2023, 11:04 AM UTC

blueflow wrote: post #10

exa: 8 years, dead ls: 38 years and counting. Long live ls.

Seems a bit unfair to call it dead, exa's maintainer is unreachable, but the whole thing lives on as eza and is very much alive. That's a bit like saying that any company/product that changes it's name is dead at that point.

Re: Exa Is Deprecated

#26

Post by stavros » Thu, Sep 07, 2023, 11:05 AM UTC

boxed wrote: post #11

goku12 wrote: post #2

I hope that the author Benjamin Sago is alright. It's always concerning when FOSS developers disappear for a while - even though it isn't uncommon.

I wish there was a better way for the community to handle this situation without the original author doing what we see here. Sometimes the original author dies unexpectedly for example and it's very hard to salvage the work into a maintained fork. I wrote about this in 2018: https://kodare.net/2018/06/25/salvaging-abandoned-projects.h...

There is, I created it years ago, but unfortunately it hasn't taken off:

https://www.codeshelter.co/

Maybe I'm bad at marketing, it seems like a pity.

Re: Exa Is Deprecated

#27

Post by stavros » Thu, Sep 07, 2023, 11:05 AM UTC

dale_glass wrote: post #19

boxed wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wish there was a better way for the community to handle this situation without the original author doing what we see here. Sometimes the original author dies unexpectedly for example and it's very hard to salvage the work into a maintained fork. I wrote about this in 2018: https://kodare.net/2018/06/25/salvaging-abandoned-projects.h...

We've started a non-profit to deal with such issues. It's a lot of work, but well worthwhile in the long term because part of the process is clarifying such issues, and the organization keeps on existing regardless of any individual member. Still, even this situation is much better than what we had before. It's on github and so the project doesn't randomly vanish from existence when the owner isn't there to maintain…

I added a sibling comment, I made https://www.codeshelter.co/ a while back. Maybe we should partner.

Re: Exa Is Deprecated

#28

Post by stavros » Thu, Sep 07, 2023, 11:06 AM UTC

dystroy wrote: post #23

kbd wrote: post #13

I never used exa as a general `ls` replacement, but I did use it as a `tree` replacement. Its tree view that gives you file stats from ls alongside a `tree`-like view I haven't found replicated in any other tool. Here are the aliases I use: et() { exa -alT --git -I'.git|node_modules|.mypy_cache|.pytest_cache|.venv' --color=always "$@" | less -R; } alias et1='et -L1' alias et2='et -L2' alias et3='et -L3' exa never han…

Maybe use broot ? Its tree view is its main feature and it handles gitignore and shows many stats including dir sizes. https://dystroy.org/broot/ You can use it just like the original tree tool too: https://dystroy.org/broot/tricks/#replace-tree (disclaimer: broot author)

That seems great, thanks!

Re: Exa Is Deprecated

#29

Post by dystroy » Thu, Sep 07, 2023, 11:10 AM UTC

dale_glass wrote: post #19

boxed wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wish there was a better way for the community to handle this situation without the original author doing what we see here. Sometimes the original author dies unexpectedly for example and it's very hard to salvage the work into a maintained fork. I wrote about this in 2018: https://kodare.net/2018/06/25/salvaging-abandoned-projects.h...

We've started a non-profit to deal with such issues. It's a lot of work, but well worthwhile in the long term because part of the process is clarifying such issues, and the organization keeps on existing regardless of any individual member. Still, even this situation is much better than what we had before. It's on github and so the project doesn't randomly vanish from existence when the owner isn't there to maintain…

> "Hey, maintainer isn't active anymore but there's still interest in the project, maybe we should do something about this"

When the project isn't huge (think linux sized) it looks like the best solution, with able persons forking the project and trying to revive it. And if they don't manage to revive it (it's hard to know in advance who will be strong and available enough) maybe another fork will.

Re: Exa Is Deprecated

#30

Post by cb321 » Thu, Sep 07, 2023, 11:10 AM UTC

dystroy wrote: post #23

kbd wrote: post #13

I never used exa as a general `ls` replacement, but I did use it as a `tree` replacement. Its tree view that gives you file stats from ls alongside a `tree`-like view I haven't found replicated in any other tool. Here are the aliases I use: et() { exa -alT --git -I'.git|node_modules|.mypy_cache|.pytest_cache|.venv' --color=always "$@" | less -R; } alias et1='et -L1' alias et2='et -L2' alias et3='et -L3' exa never han…

Maybe use broot ? Its tree view is its main feature and it handles gitignore and shows many stats including dir sizes. https://dystroy.org/broot/ You can use it just like the original tree tool too: https://dystroy.org/broot/tricks/#replace-tree (disclaimer: broot author)

This kind of thing should probably be generalized so that any new parameter can be seamlessly woven into your `ls-like` reports.

https://github.com/c-blake/lc/blob/master/extensions/fe1 does `du` (like your example) as a f)ormat e)xtension, but you could use `ffprobe` to do the run-time in hours:minutes:seconds for media files (or maybe 0sec for non-media) or number of git commits or age of last VC commit as an extra timestamp or numerous other things.