# file-sniffer
[](https://travis-ci.org/vmchale/file-sniffer)
If you do a significant amount of programming, you'll probably end up with
build artifacts scattered about. `sniff` is a tool to help you find those
artifacts. It's also a useful aid when you're writing build systems
(because you can make sure your `clean` command actually cleans everything).
`sniff` can be used to find big files/directories, but so can nimble use of the
gnu coreutils.
What makes `sniff` special is that it can look *only* at files that are likely
build artifacts e.g. files with `.a` or `.o` extensions.
Features:
- [x] find "fat" files and directories
- [x] colorized output
- [x] find "likely build artifact" directories
- [x] use .gitignore/path to make decision
- [ ] multilingual command options
- [ ] match speed of gnu utils
- [x] beat the crap out of the gnu utils when using regex excludes
## Installation
### Binary install
The easiest way to install for Linux or Windows is to download a binary from the [releases
page](https://github.com/vmchale/file-sniffer/releases).
### Cargo
If your platform doesn't have binaries, get [cargo](https://rustup.rs/). Then:
```bash
$ cargo install file-sniffer
```
## Use
Search current directory for directories with build artifacts:
```bash
$ sniff artifacts
```
Look for subdirectories/files that consume the most disk space:
```bash
$ sniff sort dir
```
Look for in the current directory for directories/files that occupy more than 1GB of disk space:
```bash
$ sniff fat --threshhold G
```
### Accessibility
To turn off colorized output:
```bash
export CLICOLOR=0
```
## Benchmarks
### Replicating the benchmarks
The benchmarks use an [ion](https://github.com/redox-os/ion) shell script and
[bench](https://github.com/Gabriel439/bench) to perform the actual benchmarks.
Unfortunately, I'm not sure how meaningful they are, because as far as I know,
there aren't any comparable tools.
I ran them on the built source of cabal, but you can use any directory to
benchmark them with:
```bash
./ion/bench --path $PATH_TO_DIR
```