retree 🌲

retree — a modern GNU tree-compatible utility for displaying directory structures.
Written in Rust. Optimized for Windows. Runs on Windows, Linux, and macOS.

🇷🇺 Русская версия

🎯 Why retree?

✅ GNU tree compatibility
⚡ Parallel traversal (up to 6× faster on large trees)
🎨 LS_COLORS and TREE_COLORS support
🔤 Icons (Nerd Font / Unicode / ASCII)
📦 Export to JSON / XML / HTML
🪟 Full NTFS support (ADS, junctions, long paths)
🌍 English and Russian interface

📦 Installation

Binary releases

Download the prebuilt binary from GitHub Releases, extract it, and add to PATH.

Cargo

cargo install retree

Build from source

git clone https://github.com/M4dPac/retree.git

cd retree

cargo build --release

The binary will be at target/release/rt.

🔐 Release verification

Every release includes SHA256SUMS.txt with checksums, signed via Sigstore cosign.

Linux / macOS:

# Download the binary, SHA256SUMS.txt and SHA256SUMS.txt.bundle from Releases


# Verify checksum

sha256sum -c SHA256SUMS.txt


# Verify signature (requires cosign)

cosign verify-blob SHA256SUMS.txt --bundle SHA256SUMS.txt.bundle \

  --certificate-oidc-issuer https://token.actions.githubusercontent.com \

  --certificate-identity-regexp "github\.com/M4dPac/retree"

Windows PowerShell:

# Verify checksum

(Get-Content SHA256SUMS.txt) | ForEach-Object {
    $hash, $file = $_ -split '\s+', 2
    $actual = (Get-FileHash $file -Algorithm SHA256).Hash.ToLower()
    if ($actual -eq $hash) { "OK: $file" } else { "FAIL: $file" }
}

Note: ⚠️ The Windows .exe is not yet Authenticode-signed. Use SHA256 + cosign verification to confirm integrity.

🚀 Quick start

💡 Note: For maximum typing speed in the terminal, the utility uses the short command rt (adjacent keys on the keyboard).

# Show current directory

rt


# Show hidden files

rt -a


# Limit depth

rt -L 2


# Directories only

rt -d


# Colors and icons

rt -C --icons always


# JSON output

rt -J > tree.json


# Pretty-printed JSON

rt --json-pretty > tree.json


# Parallel mode (auto-detect threads)

rt --parallel


# Parallel mode with explicit thread count

rt --parallel --threads 4

📚 Usage

rt [OPTIONS] [PATH...]

Common options

Flag	Description
`-a`	Show hidden files
`-d`	Directories only
`-L N`	Limit depth
`-P PATTERN`	Filter by glob
`-I PATTERN`	Exclude by glob
`-h`	Human-readable sizes
`-D`	Show modification date
`-J`	JSON output
`--json-pretty`	Pretty-printed JSON output
`-C`	Always use color
`--icons always`	Enable icons
`--parallel`	Parallel traversal
`--threads N`	Number of worker threads

📖 Full documentation

⚡ Performance

retree uses Rayon (work-stealing), lazy metadata loading, optimized sorting, and streaming output.

Real benchmark results (median time, Criterion, release mode, Windows/NTFS, end-to-end):

Files	Sequential	Parallel (auto)	Streaming
100	~54 ms	~14 ms	~54 ms
10 000	~5.3 s	~861 ms	~5.7 s
100 000	~51.5 s	~9.4 s	~53.5 s
1 000 000	~576 s	~102 s	~622 s

💾 Memory usage (PeakWorkingSet64):

Files	Sequential	Streaming	Savings
10 000	15.6 MB	6.6 MB	58%
100 000	100.2 MB	10.4 MB	90%

Parallel mode is effective starting at ~1 000 files (up to 6× speedup). Streaming mode does not build the tree in memory — 90%+ savings on large trees.

💡 Tip: to quickly preview the first N entries of a large tree, use --streaming --max-entries N — traversal stops immediately after outputting N entries. In standard mode, the full tree is built first, then truncated.

More details: 👉 Benchmarks

📊 Comparison with GNU tree

Feature	GNU tree	retree
Colors	✅	✅
JSON	✅	✅
XML	✅	✅
HTML	✅	✅
Parallel traversal	❌	✅
Icons	❌	✅
NTFS ADS	❌	✅
Junction points	❌	✅
Long paths	❌	✅
Streaming output	❌	✅
Multilingual UI	❌	✅

🗺️ Roadmap

Stable release on crates.io
Config file (~/.retreerc.toml)
.gitignore / .treeignore support
Directory size aggregation (--du)
Interactive mode
Homebrew / Scoop / Winget packages

🤝 Contributing

PRs and issues are welcome.

cargo test

cargo fmt

cargo clippy

Details: 👉 Development Guide

📄 License

MIT License

Made with ❤️ and 🦀 Rust

retree 0.6.0