Exa Is Deprecated • Hacker News Board

Re: Exa Is Deprecated

#211

Post by anthk » Thu, Sep 07, 2023, 8:00 PM UTC

cb321 wrote: post #76

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 This was actually a big draw of GNU implementations in the mid-to-late 1980s vs. the "then classics" of the mid-to-late-1970s. Before the dominance of Linux / OSX, people on SunOS / Ultrix / HP-UX / Irix / AIX / *BSD would often quickly install those more featureful GNU utilities. I imagine AIX/*BSD people still do.

exa is not a rewrite. GNU utilities are an actual replacement.

Re: Exa Is Deprecated

#213

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Sep 07, 2023, 8:05 PM UTC

zanellato19 wrote: post #149

blueflow wrote: post #10

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

Which ls is 38 years? Forks don't count.

[deleted]

Re: Exa Is Deprecated

#214

Post by anthk » Thu, Sep 07, 2023, 8:05 PM UTC

ohgodplsno wrote: post #69

basedrum wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like how people are arguing that ls is alive, like there is active work being done on it over 38 years. A Unix tool that does one thing well can be considered finished and sit for years without anything going on. That doesn't mean it's dead. Sure, maybe people want fancy new stuff, but again, doesn't mean dead. If it had security problems for years, then one could argue that it's dangerous for it not to be updated…

Exactly! ls is alive, and just exists, mostly. The commits done on it are extremely minor changes to save up 0.0001% of performance and because the APIs it was using are sometimes deprecated. And that's fine! However, when a new project arrives and does more, suddenly it's dogshit because it's stopped evolving despite doing infinitely more than ls. Unixheads have a weird inferiority complex when it comes to anything…

coreutils is GNU. GNU is not unix. BSD utilities in base have far more utilities than coreutils.

Also, learn to use ls -F under an alias. You get the 99% of the functionality with very little.

Re: Exa Is Deprecated

#215

Post by bjourne » Thu, Sep 07, 2023, 8:19 PM UTC

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…

Try getting autotools to work on Windows. Then try getting it to compile with Visual Studio. Then try getting it to cross-compile 32-bit binaries on a 64-bit system. If you aren't bald already I promise you'll tear your hair out.

Re: Exa Is Deprecated

#216

Post by alwillis » Thu, Sep 07, 2023, 8:39 PM UTC

Exa is one of the first utilities I install when doing a new installation on macOS or FreeBSD.

I don’t mind a fork was necessary; that’s pretty common with open source projects. Looking forward to eza.

Re: Exa Is Deprecated

#217

Post by Arcuru » Thu, Sep 07, 2023, 9:13 PM UTC

pkulak wrote: post #209

Arg, there's no Nix package for eza. Maybe I need to make one...

There is, but it's only in unstable. It hasn't been backported to 23.05.

Re: Exa Is Deprecated

#218

Post by prmoustache » Thu, Sep 07, 2023, 9:38 PM UTC

boxed wrote: post #101

keepamovin wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it's very hard to salvage the work into a maintained fork. How is it hard? Just fork it.

Do read my article. I have a very clear example of why that actually doesn't work in practice.

The fact you wrote an srticle about it doesn't mean we are all forced to agree with your conclusions and suggestions.

Re: Exa Is Deprecated

#219

Post by justcool393 » Thu, Sep 07, 2023, 9:47 PM UTC

sanderjd wrote: post #44

bachmeier wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

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

reminds me of this old joke

> I saw a book entitled "Die GNU Autotools" and I thought "My feelings exactly". Turns out the book was in German.

https://twitter.com/timmartin2/status/23365017839599616

gnu autotools i suppose works for some projects, but wow does it seem to be completely annoying to use.

Re: Exa Is Deprecated

#220

Post by rascul » Thu, Sep 07, 2023, 10:08 PM UTC

pkulak wrote: post #210

retrac wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Worth noting that the Unix shell itself is not a "built-in". The kernel is agnostic about the user interface, which is left entirely to userspace programs to implement. (That was one of Unix's major innovations.)

/bin/sh is a POSIX requirement though.

sh is, but not the location.

> Applications should note that the standard PATH to the shell cannot be assumed to be either /bin/sh or /usr/bin/sh, and should be determined by interrogation of the PATH returned by getconf PATH, ensuring that the returned pathname is an absolute pathname and not a shell built-in.

https://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9699919799/utilities/s...

However, in my experience, I don't recall seeing any POSIX or POSIX like system that didn't have /bin/sh.