Exa
Dev tools
command line utility
SHOW HN2015
132points
87comments
#166of 2,565 in 2015
Top 7%of 2015 by points
How HN took it
MixedNo clear lean
6 positive, 17 neutral or asking, 4 mixed, 15 critical, out of 42 comments about the project. Thread score -0.15.
Idea: 4 for, 2 againstDesign: 0 for, 6 againstExecution: 1 for, 4 againstPerformance: 0 for, 3 against
The thread, comment by comment
Each row is a top-level comment and its replies, in HN's order. Select a cell to open that comment on HN.
positive neutral or mixed critical about another commenter or something else the maker
What HN said
What people liked
Git integration and symlink preview are useful
From 2 comments
A better ls! I love the git integration.
zeekay on HNWorks pretty good! I really like the symbolic-link-preview. But I think it would be better when you just add -l when you enter things like -h, -T, -b, ... or allow an option for…
TN1ck on HN
Works well and is fun to use
From 1 comment
I am using it right now and it is great! My only complaint is that it is a lot easier to type `ls` than `exa` :) (all the letters are on different key rows with the same hand)
EpicDavi on HN
Objections
Requires Rust to install
From 1 comment
Am I the only one who, while I think this is awesome utility and idea, find that unless you are Rust enthusiast, likelihood of using it is very low. I think there is a need for…
desireco42 on HN
Column alignment looks buggy
From 1 comment
It is very promising but sadly the alignment of the column mode looks very buggy at the moment.
on_and_off on HN
Slow on very large directories
From 2 comments
I would not joy until exa is tried over a fs with more than a million files. Huge file numbers are a thing now and it is becoming to be an engineering challenge.
fsniper on HNexa can certainly handle a million files. Try running "exa -lRT ~" and watch it produce a tree view of your entire home directory! However, by 'handle', I actually mean 'run…
cytzol on HN
Requests
Distribute prebuilt binaries or package it in Homebrew
From 2 comments
If the binary could be distributed, then there's no reason you'd need to install Rust to use it.
wtetzner on HNOK, yes, that is what I would like to see. Maybe if it would show up in homebrew, then it would be good to install.
desireco42 on HN
Show directory sizes
From 2 comments
Not tried yet. Wonder if it's got the option to display the size of directories. On the screenshots, the directories are shown with '-' just like the case with the ls.
aurora72 on HNDo you mean recursing into a directory and summing the file sizes of its contents? exa doesn't do this, sorry, but it's something I've been thinking of adding. ls actually…
cytzol on HN
Add -l automatically with other options
From 2 comments
Works pretty good! I really like the symbolic-link-preview. But I think it would be better when you just add -l when you enter things like -h, -T, -b, ... or allow an option for…
TN1ck on HNThanks! Years ago I wrote a wrapper for ls that just added colours and did highlighting - but not only was it much slower, I couldn't do things like preview a symlink's path…
cytzol on HN
Questions
Does it work with light terminal backgrounds
From 1 comment
How do you pick the colours? The website uses a dark background. If I ran this tool on my terminal (with a white background), would the colours still be readable?
joosters on HN
How to package a Rust binary for distros
From 2 comments
I'd really like for that to happen (compiling to a standalone binary is one of the reasons I picked Rust), but I have no idea how to go about doing it...
cytzol on HNYou could just distribute the executable you get when you run `cargo build`. rustc / cargo statically link the Rust standard library into the app, so it should work fine on a…
geofft on HN
Alternatives named
uutils/coreutils
From 1 comment
A similar, but more broadly scoped project is uutils/coreutils [0], which is a cross-platform re-write of the GNU coreutils in Rust. IMO, both the coreutils project and Exa are…
indiv0 on HN
lsp (Go ls replacement)
From 1 comment
Another alternative is lsp: https://github.com/dborzov/lsp Unlike exa it fully supports Windows and does not have any external dependancies (as it is written in Go, everything is…
knowledgesale on HN