andre-artus / Drill

Search files without indexing, but clever crawling

Drill

TL;DR: What is this

Search files without indexing, but clever crawling:

• At least 1 thread per mount point
• Use as much RAM as possible for caching stuff
• Try to avoid "black hole folders" using a regex based blocklist in which the crawler will never come out and never scan useful files (node_modules,Windows,etc)
• Intended for desktop users, no obscure Linux files and system files scans
• Use priority lists to first scan important folders.
• Betting on the future: slowly being optimized for SSDs/M.2 or fast RAID arrays

How to run this

Use the provided AppImage, just double click it

If your distro doesn't ask you to mark it executable or nothing happens try:

• chmod +x Drill.AppImage
• ./Drill.AppImage

UI Guide

• Open = Left Double Click / Return / Enter / Space
• Open containing folder = Right click

Build and Run

Some dependencies don't build with GDC!!! Use DMD or LDC!!!

Manual prerequisites

• The repo, remember to clone the submodules too with:
  • git clone --recurse-submodules -j8 https://github.com/yatima1460/Drill.git
• D
  • curl -fsS https://dlang.org/install.sh | bash -s dmd

Configurations available (in dub.json)

• CLI
• GTK
• Win
• MacOS
• ncurses

Debug

dub run -c CONFIGURATION_NAME

Release (no logs and faster)

dub run -c CONFIGURATION_NAME -b release

What is this

I was stressed on Linux because I couldn't find the files I needed, file searchers based on system indexing (updatedb) are prone to breaking and hard to configure for the average user, so did an all nighter and started this.

Drill is a modern file searcher for Linux that tries to fix the old problem of slow searching and indexing. Nowadays even some SSDs are used for storage and every PC has nearly a minimum of 8GB of RAM and quad-core; knowing this it's time to design a future-proof file searcher that doesn't care about weak systems and uses the full multithreaded power in a clever way to find your files in the fastest possible way.

• Heuristics: The first change was the algorithm, a lot of file searchers use depth-first algorithms, this is a very stupid choice and everyone that implemented it is a moron, why? You see, normal humans don't create nested folders too much and you will probably get lost inside "black hole folders" or artificial archives (created by software); a breadth-first algorithm that scans your hard disks by depth has a higher chance to find the files you need. Second change is excluding some obvious folders while crawling like Windows and node_modules, the average user doesn't care about .dlls and all the system files, and generally even devs too don't care, and if you need to find a system file you already know what you are doing and you should not use a UI tool.

• Clever multithreading: The second change is clever multithreading, I've never seen a file searcher that starts a thread per disk and it's 2019. The limitation for file searchers is 99% of the time just the disk speed, not the CPU or RAM, then why everyone just scans the disks sequentially????

• Use your goddamn RAM: The third change is caching everything, I don't care about your RAM, I will use even 8GB of your RAM if this provides me a faster way to find your files, unused RAM is wasted RAM, even truer the more time passes.

Contributing

TODOs:

• Core Backend

  • Open file or path
    • Linux X11
      • Open File
      • Select file if contained folder
      • Error on file open
    • Linux Wayland
      • Open File
      • Select file if contained folder
      • Error on file open
    • Windows
      • Open File
      • Select file if contained folder
      • Error on file open
    • MacOS
      • Open File
      • Select file if contained folder
      • Error on file open
  • All comparisons need to be done in lower case strings
  • Priority lists specified in assets/prioritylists
  • Multi-token search (searching "a b" will find all files with "a" and "b" in the name)
  • /home/username needs to have higher priority over / crawler when /home isn't mounted on a secondary mountpoint
  • Sorting by column
  • Commas in numbers strings
    • Correct separator based on current system internationalization
  • AM/PM time base
    • Linux
    • Windows
    • MacOS
  • Folders actual size
  • Icons image needs to be generic and in the backend
  • 1 Threadpool per mount point
    • 1 Threadpool PER DISK if possible
  • Metadata searching and new tokens (mp3, etc...)
  • Memoization/Cache
  • Percentage of crawling
  • About dialog in GUI
  • Remove the synchronizations using a concurrency list
  • Split Drill in DrillGTK and DrillCore
  • Add documentation and comments
  • Fix messy imports
  • Logging in debug mode
  • NVM could benefit when multiple threads are run for the same disk?
  • No GC

• Cli Frontend

  • More arguments
  • Better/bare printing

• ncurses

• GTK Frontend

  • Open file with double click
  • Add to UI list when new results found
  • AppImage
  • Open containing folder with right click
  • Alternate row colors
  • ESC to close
  • Error messagebox if opening file fails
  • Icons near the file name
  • .deb
  • .rpm
  • Snap
  • Flatpak
  • Drag and drop

• Windows

  • Open file with double click
  • Add to UI list when new results found
  • Portable .exe
    • Installer
  • Open containing folder with right click
  • Alternate row colors
  • ESC to close
  • Error messagebox if opening file fails
  • Icons near the file name
  • Drag and drop

• MacOS

  • Open file with double click
  • Add to UI list when new results found
  • Portable executable
    • Installer
  • Open containing folder with right click
  • Alternate row colors
  • ESC to close
  • Error messagebox if opening file fails
  • Icons near the file name
  • Drag and drop