fzf in Go ========= fzf in go This directory contains the source code for the new fzf implementation in [Go][go]. Upgrade from Ruby version ------------------------- The install script has been updated to download the right binary for your system. If you already have installed fzf, simply git-pull the repository and rerun the install script. ```sh cd ~/.fzf git pull ./install ``` Otherwise, follow [the instruction][install] as before. You can also install fzf using Homebrew if you prefer that way. Motivations ----------- ### No Ruby dependency There have always been complaints about fzf being a Ruby script. To make matters worse, Ruby 2.1 removed ncurses binding from its standard libary. Because of the change, users running Ruby 2.1 or above are forced to build C extensions of curses gem to meet the requirement of fzf. The new Go version will be distributed as an executable binary so it will be much more accessible and should be easier to setup. ### Performance Many people have been surprised to see how fast fzf is even when it was written in Ruby. It stays quite responsive even for 100k+ lines, which is well above the size of the usual input. The new Go version, of course, is significantly faster than that. It has all the performance optimization techniques used in Ruby implementation and more. It also doesn't suffer from [GIL][gil], so the search performance scales proportional to the number of CPU cores. On my MacBook Pro (Mid 2012), the new version was shown to be an order of magnitude faster on certain cases. It also starts much faster though the difference may not be noticeable. Build ----- ```sh # Build fzf executables and tarballs make release # Install the executable to ../bin directory make install # Build executables and tarballs for Linux using Docker make linux ``` ### With ncurses 6 The official binaries of fzf are built with ncurses 5 because it's widely supported by different platforms. However ncurses 5 is old and has a number of limitations. 1. Does not support more than 256 color pairs (See [357][357]) 2. Does not support italics 3. Does not support 24-bit color [357]: https://github.com/junegunn/fzf/issues/357 But you can manually build fzf with ncurses 6 to overcome some of these limitations. ncurses 6 supports up to 32767 color pairs (1), and supports italics (2). To build fzf with ncurses 6, you have to install it first. On macOS, you can use Homebrew to install it. ```sh brew install homebrew/dupes/ncurses LDFLAGS="-L/usr/local/opt/ncurses/lib" make install ``` ### With tcell [tcell][tcell] is a portable alternative to ncurses and we currently use it to build Windows binaries. tcell has many benefits but most importantly, it supports 24-bit colors. To build fzf with tcell: ```sh TAGS=tcell make install ``` However, note that tcell has its own issues. - Poor rendering performance compared to ncurses - Does not support bracketed-paste mode - Does not support italics unlike ncurses 6 - Some wide characters are not correctly displayed Test ---- Unit tests can be run with `make test`. Integration tests are written in Ruby script that should be run on tmux. ```sh # Unit tests make test # Install the executable to ../bin directory make install # Integration tests ruby ../test/test_go.rb ``` Third-party libraries used -------------------------- - [ncurses][ncurses] - [mattn/go-runewidth](https://github.com/mattn/go-runewidth) - Licensed under [MIT](http://mattn.mit-license.org) - [mattn/go-shellwords](https://github.com/mattn/go-shellwords) - Licensed under [MIT](http://mattn.mit-license.org) - [mattn/go-isatty](https://github.com/mattn/go-isatty) - Licensed under [MIT](http://mattn.mit-license.org) - [tcell](https://github.com/gdamore/tcell) - Licensed under [Apache License 2.0](https://github.com/gdamore/tcell/blob/master/LICENSE) License ------- [MIT](LICENSE) [install]: https://github.com/junegunn/fzf#installation [go]: https://golang.org/ [gil]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Interpreter_Lock [ncurses]: https://www.gnu.org/software/ncurses/ [req]: http://golang.org/doc/install [tcell]: https://github.com/gdamore/tcell