microfetch/README.md

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<h1 align="center">Microfetch</h1>

Stupidly simple, laughably fast fetch tool. Written in Rust for speed and ease
of maintainability. Runs in a _fraction of a millisecond_ and displays _most_ of
the nonsense you'd see posted on r/unixporn or other internet communities. Aims
to replace [fastfetch](https://github.com/fastfetch-cli/fastfetch) on my
personal system, but [probably not yours](#customizing). Though, you are more
than welcome to use it on your system: it's pretty [fast](#benchmarks)...

<p align="center">
  <img
    alt="latest demo"
    src="./.github/assets/demo.png"
    width="850px"
  >
</p>

## Features

- Fast
- Really fast
- Minimal dependencies
- Actually really fast
- Cool NixOS logo (other, inferior, distros are not supported)
- Reliable detection of following info:
  - Hostname/Username
  - Kernel
    - Name
    - Version
    - Architecture
  - Current shell (from `$SHELL`, trimmed if store path)
  - Current Desktop (DE/WM/Compositor and display backend)
  - Memory Usage/Total Memory
  - Storage Usage/Total Storage (for `/` only)
  - Shell Colors
- Did I mention fast?
- Respects [`NO_COLOR` spec](https://no-color.org/)

## Motivation

Fastfetch, as its name indicates, a very fast fetch tool written in C, however,
I am not interested in any of its additional features, such as customization,
and I very much dislike the defaults. Microfetch is my response to this problem,
a _very fast_ fetch tool that you would normally write in Bash and put in your
`~/.bashrc` but actually _really_ fast because it opts-out of all customization
options provided by Fastfetch, and is written in Rust. Why? Because I can, and
because I prefer Rust for "structured" Bash scripts.

I cannot re-iterate it enough, Microfetch is _annoyingly fast_.

## Benchmarks

The performance may be sometimes influenced by hardware-specific race
conditions, or even your kernel configuration meaning it may (at times) depend
on your hardware. However, the overall trend appears to be less than 1.3ms on
any modern (2015 and after) CPU that I own. Below are the benchmarks with
Hyperfine on my desktop system. Please note that those benchmarks will not be
always kept up to date, but I will try to update the numbers as I make
Microfetch faster.

| Command      |    Mean [ms] | Min [ms] | Max [ms] |       Relative | Written by raf? |
| :----------- | -----------: | -------: | -------: | -------------: | --------------: |
| `microfetch` |    1.0 ± 0.1 |      0.9 |      1.7 |           1.00 |             yes |
| `fastfetch`  |   48.6 ± 1.6 |     45.8 |     61.3 |   46.65 ± 4.75 |              no |
| `pfetch`     |  206.0 ± 4.5 |    198.0 |    241.4 | 197.50 ± 19.53 |              no |
| `neofetch`   | 689.1 ± 29.1 |    637.7 |    811.2 | 660.79 ± 69.56 |              no |

As far as I'm concerned, Microfetch is significantly faster than every other
fetch tool that I have tried. The only downsides of using Rust for the project
(in exchange for speed and maintainability) is the slightly "bloated" dependency
trees, and the increased build times. The latter is very easily mitigated with
Nix's binary cache. Since Microfetch is already in Nixpkgs, you are recommended
to use it to utilize the binary cache properly

### Benchmarking Individual Functions

[Criterion.rs]: https://github.com/bheisler/criterion.rs
[Getting Started Guide]: https://bheisler.github.io/criterion.rs/book/getting_started.html

To benchmark individual functions, [Criterion.rs] is used. See Criterion's
[Getting Started Guide] for details or just run `cargo bench` to benchmark all
features of Microfetch.

## Installation

> [!NOTE]
> You will need a Nerdfonts patched font installed, and for your terminal
> emulator to support said font. Microfetch uses nerdfonts glyphs by default.

Microfetch is packaged in [nixpkgs](https://github.com/nixos/nixpkgs). It can be
installed by adding `pkgs.microfetch` to your `environment.systemPackages`.
Additionally, you can try out Microfetch in a Nix shell.

```bash
nix shell nixpkgs#microfetch
```

Or run it directly with `nix run`

```bash
nix run nixpkgs#microfetch
```

Non-Nix users will have to build Microfetch with `cargo`. It is not published
anywhere but I imagine you can use `cargo install --git` to install it from
source.

```bash
cargo install --git https://github.com/notashelf/microfetch.git
```

Microfetch is _currently_ not available anywhere else. Though, does it _really_
have to be?

## Customizing

You can't.

### Why?

Customization, of any kind, is expensive: I could try reading environment
variables, parse command-line arguments or read a configuration file but all of
those increment execution time and resource consumption by a lot.

### Really?

To be fair, you _can_ customize Microfetch by, well, patching it. It's not the
best way per se, but it will be the only way that does not compromise on speed.

The Nix package allows passing patches in a streamlined manner by passing
`.overrideAttrs` to the derivation.

## Contributing

I will, mostly, reject feature additions. This is not to say you should avoid
them altogether, as you might have a really good idea worth discussing but as a
general rule of thumb consider talking to me before creating a feature PR.

Contributions that help improve performance in specific areas of Microfetch are
welcome. Though, prepare to be bombarded with questions if your changes are
large.

## Hacking

A Nix flake is provided. `nix develop` to get started. Direnv users may simply
run `direnv allow` to get started.

Non-nix users will need `cargo` and `gcc` installed on their system, see
`Cargo.toml` for available release profiles.

## Thanks

Huge thanks to everyone who took the time to make pull requests or nag me in
person about current issues. To list a few, special thanks to:

- [@Nydragon](https://github.com/Nydragon) - For packaging Microfetch in Nixpkgs
- [@ErrorNoInternet](https://github.com/ErrorNoInternet) - Performance
  improvements and code assistance
- [@SoraTenshi](https://github.com/SoraTenshi) - General tips and code
  improvements
- [@bloxx12](https://github.com/bloxx12) - Performance improvements and
  benchmarking plots
- [@sioodmy](https://github.com/sioodmy) - Being cute
- [@mewoocat](https://github.com/mewoocat) - The awesome NixOS logo ASCII used
  in Microfetch

Additionally a big thank you to everyone who used, talked about or criticized
Microfetch. I might have missed your name here, but you have my thanks.

## License

Microfetch is licensed under [GPL3](LICENSE). See the license file for details.