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Show HN: Projectable - a TUI file manager built for projects

49 points by dzfrias 3y ago

dzfrias 3y ago
This is one of the first applications I've made that's actually usable. I'd love your feedback, positive or negative! You can read more about the motivations/highlights of the project on my blog (at https://dzfrias.dev/blog/projectable https://dzfrias.dev/blog/projectable).
fresh2dev 3y ago
I can dig this; eager to tinker with it later. There are a few options in this space (Broot being my favorite). The ability to define custom commands (as Broot does) is powerful. Will be watching this repo; thank you for Projectable and best of luck to ya.
Reticularas 3y ago
[dead]
anta40 3y ago
Being able to quickly inspect your project structure from CLI is certainly very nice. Previously always relies on tools like VSCode. Let's play with this...
ilyagr 3y ago
`broot` (https://github.com/Canop/broot https://github.com/Canop/broot) is another file manager with a curious interface that seems to fill a similar niche. Of course, there are many other file managers to choose from (mc, ranger, nnn, lf, ....), but most of them don't show nested subdirectories by default.
two_handfuls 3y ago
A word of advice if I may. The first paragraph on the page says “(…) You can do everything your project needs from a comfortable and smooth interface.” Generally, overpromising is best avoided. The reader may be thinking completely differently from yourself when you wrote that the project can do “everything”. Can it keep track of invoices? Staffing? Timelines? Can it track my cloud expenses? Perhaps those things fall under “project management” for your reader. I recommend being more specific in what the tool does in these first paragraphs.
- dzfrias 3y ago
  Good point, thanks for the advice. Perhaps "project management" is a bit misleading as well... maybe I'll just stick to "TUI file manager". Hopefully marketing it as more of a file manager for a project as opposed to a full-on project manager promises less. I'll update the README soon.
  - two_handfuls 3y ago
    That’s a good idea, I think there is more agreement on a file manager does. Then you can explain what you find most exciting about the program, what it does best or what’s unique about it.
ChickeNES 3y ago
Have you considered adding a feature that scans source files for TODO/FIXME/XXX/etc comments?
mmgutz 3y ago
I imagine most people who live in the terminal are using their editor's file manager for this. How does this compare to neovim+nvim_tree for example? Seems like a subset of what a modern neovim setup can do.
- aldanor 3y ago
  Yea, neovim + telescope + neotree pretty much replaces this, from the first glance.
- dzfrias 3y ago
  That's absolutely true for people who want to interact with their projects using their editors exclusively! Personally, I like using both my shell and neovim for stuff like this, and I felt like there was no great option for me on the shell-end of things. The usefulness of a tool like this is definitely completely dependent on a person's workflow.
ansgri 3y ago
I see a lot of TUI and rich-console applications that don’t require high performance are written in Rust lately, does it have especially good libraries for that, or is the ease of distribution the deciding factor to prefer it over scripting languages?
- dzfrias 3y ago
  Rust has great libraries for TUIs. tui-rs (https://github.com/fdehau/tui-rs https://github.com/fdehau/tui-rs) has been used in numerous popular applications, but is unmaintained. ratatui (https://github.com/tui-rs-revival/ratatui https://github.com/tui-rs-revival/ratatui) is the maintained version, and is pretty new. Less widely known is cursive (https://github.com/gyscos/cursive https://github.com/gyscos/cursive), which I have yet to try. Aside from the libraries, I just wanted to start a project that would make be better at Rust. The easy distribution with cargo is a huge bonus though.

49 points by dzfrias 3y ago

This is one of the first applications I've made that's actually usable. I'd love your feedback, positive or negative! You can read more about the motivations/highlights of the project on my blog (at https://dzfrias.dev/blog/projectable https://dzfrias.dev/blog/projectable).

fresh2dev 3y ago

I can dig this; eager to tinker with it later. There are a few options in this space (Broot being my favorite). The ability to define custom commands (as Broot does) is powerful. Will be watching this repo; thank you for Projectable and best of luck to ya.

Reticularas 3y ago

[dead]

anta40 3y ago

Being able to quickly inspect your project structure from CLI is certainly very nice. Previously always relies on tools like VSCode. Let's play with this...

ilyagr 3y ago

`broot` (https://github.com/Canop/broot https://github.com/Canop/broot) is another file manager with a curious interface that seems to fill a similar niche. Of course, there are many other file managers to choose from (mc, ranger, nnn, lf, ....), but most of them don't show nested subdirectories by default.

two_handfuls 3y ago

A word of advice if I may. The first paragraph on the page says “(…) You can do everything your project needs from a comfortable and smooth interface.” Generally, overpromising is best avoided. The reader may be thinking completely differently from yourself when you wrote that the project can do “everything”. Can it keep track of invoices? Staffing? Timelines? Can it track my cloud expenses? Perhaps those things fall under “project management” for your reader. I recommend being more specific in what the tool does in these first paragraphs.

dzfrias 3y ago
Good point, thanks for the advice. Perhaps "project management" is a bit misleading as well... maybe I'll just stick to "TUI file manager". Hopefully marketing it as more of a file manager for a project as opposed to a full-on project manager promises less. I'll update the README soon.
- two_handfuls 3y ago
  That’s a good idea, I think there is more agreement on a file manager does. Then you can explain what you find most exciting about the program, what it does best or what’s unique about it.

ChickeNES 3y ago

Have you considered adding a feature that scans source files for TODO/FIXME/XXX/etc comments?

mmgutz 3y ago

I imagine most people who live in the terminal are using their editor's file manager for this. How does this compare to neovim+nvim_tree for example? Seems like a subset of what a modern neovim setup can do.

aldanor 3y ago
Yea, neovim + telescope + neotree pretty much replaces this, from the first glance.
dzfrias 3y ago
That's absolutely true for people who want to interact with their projects using their editors exclusively! Personally, I like using both my shell and neovim for stuff like this, and I felt like there was no great option for me on the shell-end of things. The usefulness of a tool like this is definitely completely dependent on a person's workflow.

ansgri 3y ago

I see a lot of TUI and rich-console applications that don’t require high performance are written in Rust lately, does it have especially good libraries for that, or is the ease of distribution the deciding factor to prefer it over scripting languages?

dzfrias 3y ago
Rust has great libraries for TUIs. tui-rs (https://github.com/fdehau/tui-rs https://github.com/fdehau/tui-rs) has been used in numerous popular applications, but is unmaintained. ratatui (https://github.com/tui-rs-revival/ratatui https://github.com/tui-rs-revival/ratatui) is the maintained version, and is pretty new. Less widely known is cursive (https://github.com/gyscos/cursive https://github.com/gyscos/cursive), which I have yet to try. Aside from the libraries, I just wanted to start a project that would make be better at Rust. The easy distribution with cargo is a huge bonus though.