Last Updated on September 1, 2020
In Operation
Here’s an image of dutree in action. On my system, the bars are monochrome, but they can be changed by modifying the LS_COLORS environment variable.
What does dutree offers besides displaying the file system tree? In the above image, we are aggregating small files by running dutree with the -a flag. You can also display the output using ASCII characters with the -A flag.
The software also lets you exclude files or directories (with the -x flag), as well as comparing different directories. To display real disk usage instead of file size, use the -u flag. You can show directories up to a given depth (default 1), using the -d flag.
The developer claims the software is fast. But we found the software was very slow in navigating through large disks, compared to say ncdu. On our first run, we actually thought dutree had crashed as the process was taking an inordinate amount of time. And there’s no real-time progress indicator except for the flashing indicator from the case of the PC indicating disk activity.
Pages in this article:
Page 1 – Introduction / Installation
Page 2 – In Operation
Page 3 – Summary
“my disks always fill up over time”
Shall I let you into a secret? Your disks are filling up at an even FASTER rate when installing all of these new rust language programs to replace the equivalent functionality of standard C/C++ programs.
Old fashioned tux commander binary (and tuxcmd functionality can be expanded with various plugins) has a size of 1,8 Mbyte. The size of dutree is over 8 times that at 15 Mbyte.
“we found the software was very slow […] compared to say ncdu”
Well, you took the words right out of my mouth. Yep, bloated too.
The size of the binary dutree is 1.5MB not 15MB. It’s not bloated. Disks fill up not because users have installed a few Rust programs but because of things like design decisions taken by distributions, end users forgetting they have downloaded huge files, software that use huge disk caches etc.
You are correct Bear. dutree uses 1.5MB of hard disk space.
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 1.5M Feb 6 16:46 dutree
Rust programs can use more hard disk space than ‘standard’ utilities they replace. But that’s comparing oranges with apples. In any event, even a system with 100 Rust utilities consuming a few megabytes each wouldn’t be the cause of running out of hard disk space.