After watching this video, I’m tempted to give it a try myself. The idea of swapping out traditional CLI tools for Rust-based alternatives is intriguing, and I’m curious to know if anyone has undertaken such an endeavor.

I’m also on the lookout for dotfiles that primarily feature configurations for Rust tools. I find it both educational and entertaining to explore other people’s configurations. I stumbled upon this repository, but I’m interested in discovering more if possible.

  • 𝕽𝖚𝖆𝖎𝖉𝖍𝖗𝖎𝖌𝖍@midwest.social
    0·
    11 months ago

    I have a strong bias for staying with tools that are installed by default. After this many years working with new systems of my own, containers, and systems where I’m not root, the added value of an alternativehas to be quite high for me to switch a core utility.

    Thay said, I’ve found fd, ripgrep, and helix to meet that criteria. The others, not so much; they either don’t improve upon or add functionality that’s not available, or simply add eye candy. Gaining pretty colors is nice, but not worth losing familiarity with ubiquitous tools.

    git-delta is an exception where the syntax highlighting can make a functional difference in code diffs. Not so much that I think about installing it, or using it outside of indirect VCS configuration, but it is a good example of using style for more than just eye candy. I prefer difftastic, but they do much the same.

    While it’s not a replacement for an existing tool and isn’t in your list, nnn is very helpful in many cases, especially bulk renames and reorganizations.

    • dino@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
      0·
      11 months ago

      While it’s not a replacement for an existing tool and isn’t in your list, nnn is very helpful in many cases, especially bulk renames and reorganizations.

      Can you give an example on the reorganization benefits with nnn? I am using it myself but I still feel like a noob with it.

      • 𝕽𝖚𝖆𝖎𝖉𝖍𝖗𝖎𝖌𝖍@midwest.social
        2·
        11 months ago

        So, I did a whole asciinema demonstration to show you, but it was getting tedious. It started to turn into a whole tutorial, and I really didn’t want to go there. That’s why it’s taken so long for me to reply.

        But there are three things I do with nnn:

        • move things. I use the tabs (1-4) to open different directories, space-select multiple items, and ‘v’ to move selected items to directories
        • bulk rename. Again, space-select and ctrl-r to bulk rename. Often, I don’t even select, I just ‘R’ to bulk rename the whole directory. This opens my text editor with all of the file/Dir names; edit freely, save, exit, and nnn renames whatever changed.
        • move/copy to remote locations. With ‘c’ nnn can mount a remote directory over ssh in a tab, and it works just like a local directory, with copying, moving, and renaming seamlessly between tabs.

        I don’t “live” in nnn; it’s a tool I open when I want to do certain things - it’s fast enough to use this way. But you certainly could, since nnn can fork shell processes in selected directories.