Web mode

[dundee]

Hello gdu contributors @fabaff @petasittek @egeoz @ouuan @c02y @lhl @kaihendry!
I am playing with an idea to add "web mode" into gdu.
So it would start an http server and open a browser where you will see results of the scanning.

Do you think it would be a good addition to gdu?

You can check some very small basis of functionality using (go 1.16 is needed):

go get -u github.com/dundee/gdu/v5
$GOPATH/bin/gdu web /

[kaihendry]

I personally like the idea of a local Web mode, e.g. one of my projects for viewing images https://github.com/kaihendry/lk2

[ouuan]

I don't know how heavy the web mode is, so I'm wondering if it is a better idea to make the web mode a separate project. It can share codes with the cli version of gdu, or we can even have a libgdu.

[dundee]

Good idea! I will see how much will the web mode increase the size.

[c02y]

I personally don't think web-mode is necessary for such cli tool like gdu which is a disk usage analyzer in terminal, I use it in terminal, I don't like such kind of GUI app either, let alone such program in browser, like @ouuan said, if you like the web-mode idea, maybe you should start a new project.

[dundee]

Thanks for your answers. I will indeed develop the web mode as a separate project.

One more question for you: How do you like the CLI interface introduced in v5?
There are now commands (help, version, interactive and disks) instead of options. The usage now looks like this:

Usage:
  gdu [directory_to_scan] [flags]
  gdu [command]

Available Commands:
  disks       Show all mounted disks
  help        Help about any command
  interactive Run in interactive mode
  version     Print the version number of gdu

Flags:
  -h, --help                  help for gdu
  -i, --ignore-dirs strings   Absolute paths to ignore (separated by comma) (default [/proc,/dev,/sys,/run])
  -l, --log-file string       Path to a logfile (default "/dev/null")
  -c, --no-color              Do not use colorized output
  -x, --no-cross              Do not cross filesystem boundaries
  -p, --no-progress           Do not show progress in non-interactive mode
  -a, --show-apparent-size    Show apparent size

And there are shortcuts: i for interactive and d for disks.

It has one drawback - default mode is now non-interactive, but overall it looks a little bit more logical and sleek for me.

Few examples:

gdu /                      # same as current gdu -n /

gdu interactive /      # same as current gdu /
gdu i /                     # the same with shortcut

gdu disks               # same as current gdu -nd
gdu d                     # the same with shortcut

gdu interactive disks   # same as current gdu -d
gdu i d                         # the same with shortcuts

What do you think? Do you like more the new concept or the current interface?

[ouuan]

The new interface indicates that both i and d are subcommands, but the gdu i d usage shows that i is actually an option, not a subcommand. So I think it should be -i instead of i.

I personally prefer the current interface, but the new one is OK since I can use aliases in my zshrc.

[ouuan]

And it's better to always have a subcommand (gdu something / instead of gdu /), otherwise we need a way to distinguish subcommands and directory names.

[c02y]

Does gdu really need subcommands? Options are enough for me. Currently gdu is just a disk usage analyzer cli tool, now according to this thread, I don't know what the final gdu will be.

[dundee]

The new interface indicates that both i and d are subcommands, but the gdu i d usage shows that i is actually an option, not a subcommand. So I think it should be -i instead of i.

I personally prefer the current interface, but the new one is OK since I can use aliases in my zshrc.

d is subcommand of gdu and also subsubcommand of gdu i.

I agree. It's not needed for gdu to have subcommands. I will introduce this interface in the new project with web interface, there it makes more sense.

Thanks again for your replies!

[rwahyudi]

I think it would be better if the web mode is focusing on reading from generated reports rather than driving gdu in real time. It would be mroe awesome if we could generate comparison between reports.