## Synopsis
[fastfetch]: https://github.com/fastfetch-cli/fastfetch
Stupidly small and simple, laughably fast and pretty 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] on my personal system, but
[probably not yours](#customizing). Though, you are more than welcome to use it
on your system: it is pretty _[fast](#benchmarks)_...
## Features
- Fast
- Really fast
- Minimal dependencies
- Tiny binary (~410kb)
- 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 probably hinted, is a very fast fetch tool written in C.
However, I am not interested in _any_ of its additional features, and I'm not
interested in its configuration options. Sure I can _configure_ it when I
dislike the defaults, but how often would I really change the configuration...
Microfetch is my response to this problem. It is an _even faster_ fetch tool
that I would've written in Bash and put in my `~/.bashrc` but is _actually_
incredibly fast because it opts out of all the customization options provided by
tools such as Fastfetch. Ultimately, it's a small, opinionated binary with a
nice size that doesn't bother me, and incredible speed. Customization? No thank
you. I cannot re-iterate it enough, Microfetch is _annoyingly fast_.
The project is written in Rust, which comes at the cost of "bloated" dependency
trees and the increased build times, but we make an extended effort to keep the
dependencies minimal and build times managable. The latter is also very easily
mitigated with Nix's binary cache systems. Since Microfetch is already in
Nixpkgs, you are recommended to use it to utilize the binary cache properly. The
usage of Rust _is_ nice, however, since it provides us with incredible tooling
and a very powerful language that allows for Microfetch to be as fast as
possible. Sure C could've been used here as well, but do you think I hate
myself? [^1]
[^1]: Okay, maybe a little bit. One of the future goals of Microfetch is to
defer to inline Assembly for the costliest functions, but that's for a
future date and until I do that I can pretend to be sane.
## Benchmarks
Below are the benchmarks that I've used to back up my claims of Microfetch's
speed. It is fast, it is _very_ fast and that is the point of its existence. It
_could_ be faster, and it will be. Eventually.
At this point in time, the performance may be sometimes influenced by
hardware-specific race conditions or even your kernel configuration. Which means
that Microfetch's speed may (at times) depend on your hardware setup. However,
even with the worst possible hardware I could find in my house, I've achieved a
nice less-than-1ms invocation time. Which is pretty good. While Microfetch
_could_ be made faster, we're in the territory of environmental bottlenecks
given how little Microfetch actually allocates.
Below are the actual benchmarks with Hyperfine measured on my Desktop system.
The benchmarks were performed under medium system load, and may not be the same
on your system. Please _also_ 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 [µs] | Min [µs] | Max [µs] | Relative | Written by raf? |
| :----------- | ----------------: | -------: | -------: | -------------: | --------------: |
| `microfetch` | 604.4 ± 64.2 | 516.0 | 1184.6 | 1.00 | Yes |
| `fastfetch` | 140836.6 ± 1258.6 | 139204.7 | 143299.4 | 233.00 ± 24.82 | No |
| `pfetch` | 177036.6 ± 1614.3 | 174199.3 | 180830.2 | 292.89 ± 31.20 | No |
| `neofetch` | 406309.9 ± 1810.0 | 402757.3 | 409526.3 | 672.20 ± 71.40 | No |
| `nitch` | 127743.7 ± 1391.7 | 123933.5 | 130451.2 | 211.34 ± 22.55 | No |
| `macchina` | 13603.7 ± 339.7 | 12642.9 | 14701.4 | 22.51 ± 2.45 | No |
The point stands that Microfetch is significantly faster than every other fetch
tool I have tried. This is to be expected, of course, since Microfetch is
designed _explicitly_ for speed and makes some tradeoffs to achieve it's
signature speed.
### 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.
### Profiling Allocations and Timing
[Hotpath]: https://github.com/pawurb/hotpath
Microfetch uses [Hotpath] for profiling function execution timing and heap
allocations. This helps identify performance bottlenecks and track optimization
progress. It is so effective that thanks to Hotpath, Microfetch has seen a 60%
reduction in the number of allocations.
To profile timing:
```bash
HOTPATH_JSON=true cargo run --features=hotpath
```
To profile allocations:
```bash
HOTPATH_JSON=true cargo run --features=hotpath,hotpath-alloc-count-total
```
The JSON output can be analyzed with the `hotpath` CLI tool for detailed
performance metrics. On pull requests, GitHub Actions automatically profiles
both timing and allocations, posting comparison comments to help catch
performance regressions.
## 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.
