Man page updates

Haven't mentioned the new -O flag in the examples section yet. Let's
first keep it as a slightly lower-profile feature while the format gains
wider testing and adoption.
This commit is contained in:
Yorhel 2024-09-26 15:07:07 +02:00
parent 39517c01a8
commit e142d012f0

51
ncdu.1
View file

@ -6,6 +6,7 @@
.Sh NAME
.Nm ncdu
.Nd NCurses Disk Usage
.
.Sh SYNOPSIS
.Nm
.Op Fl f Ar file
@ -45,11 +46,13 @@
.Op Fl h , \-help
.Nm
.Op Fl v , V , \-version
.
.Sh DESCRIPTION
.Nm
(NCurses Disk Usage) is an interactive curses-based version of the well-known
.Xr du 1 ,
and provides a fast way to see what directories are using your disk space.
.
.Sh OPTIONS
.Ss Mode Selection
.Bl -tag -width Ds
@ -60,10 +63,13 @@ Print version and quit.
.It Fl f Ar file
Load the given file, which has earlier been created with the
.Fl o
or
.Fl O
flag.
If
.Ar file
is equivalent to '\-', the file is read from standard input.
Reading from standard input is only supported for the JSON format.
.Pp
For the sake of preventing a screw-up, the current version of
.Nm
@ -74,7 +80,7 @@ will be disabled.
.It Ar dir
Scan the given directory.
.It Fl o Ar file
Export all necessary information to
Export the directory tree in JSON format to
.Ar file
instead of opening the browser interface.
If
@ -88,6 +94,22 @@ directory with many files.
uncompressed, or a little over 100 KiB when compressed with gzip.
This scales linearly, so be prepared to handle a few tens of megabytes when
dealing with millions of files.
.Pp
When running a multi-threaded scan or when scanning a directory tree that may
not fit in memory, consider using
.Fl O
instead.
.It Fl O Ar file
Export the directory tree in binary format to
.Ar file
instead of opening the browser interface.
If
.Ar file
is '\-', the data is written to standard output.
The binary format has built-in compression, supports low-memory multi-threaded
export (in combination with
.Fl t )
and can be browsed without importing the entire directory tree into memory.
.It Fl e , \-extended , \-no\-extended
Enable/disable extended information mode.
This will, in addition to the usual file information, also read the ownership,
@ -106,6 +128,7 @@ using 'm' and 'M', respectively.
.It Fl \-ignore\-config
Do not attempt to load any configuration files.
.El
.
.Ss Scan Options
These options affect the scanning progress, they have no effect when importing
directory information from a file.
@ -149,16 +172,27 @@ The exact counting behavior of this flag is subject to change in the future.
The complete list of currently known pseudo filesystems is: binfmt, bpf, cgroup,
cgroup2, debug, devpts, proc, pstore, security, selinux, sys, trace.
.It Fl t , \-threads Ar num
Number of threads to use when scanning the filesystem, currently defaults to 1.
Number of threads to use when scanning the filesystem, defaults to 1.
.Pp
In single-threaded mode, the export function (see
In single-threaded mode, the JSON export (see
.Fl o )
can operate with very little memory, but in multi-threaded mode the entire
directory tree is first constructed in memory and written out after the
filesystem scan has completed,
This causes a delay in output and requires significantly more memory for large
directory trees.
The binary format (see
.Fl O )
does not have this problem and supports efficient exporting with any number of
threads.
.It Fl \-compress\-level Ar num
Set the Zstandard compression level when using
.Fl O
to create a binary export.
Valid values are 1 (fastest) to 19 (slowest).
Defaults to 4.
.El
.
.Ss Interface Options
.Bl -tag -width Ds
.It Fl 0
@ -307,6 +341,7 @@ color scheme that also works in terminals with a light background.
The default is
.Ar off .
.El
.
.Sh CONFIGURATION
.Nm
can be configured by placing command-line options in
@ -335,6 +370,7 @@ Example configuration file:
# Exclude .git directories
\-\-exclude .git
.Ed
.
.Sh KEYS
.Bl -tag -width Ds
.It ?
@ -421,6 +457,7 @@ itself does not (currently) warn about or prevent this situation.
.It q
Quit
.El
.
.Sh FILE FLAGS
Entries in the browser interface may be prefixed by a one\-character flag.
These flags have the following meaning:
@ -444,6 +481,7 @@ Same file was already counted (hard link).
.It e
Empty directory.
.El
.
.Sh EXAMPLES
To scan and browse the directory you're currently in, all you need is a simple:
.Dl ncdu
@ -483,6 +521,7 @@ the local system without any network latency, and
.Nm
does not keep the entire directory structure in memory when exporting, so this
won't consume much memory on the remote system.
.
.Sh SEE ALSO
.Xr du 1 ,
.Xr tree 1 .
@ -490,13 +529,15 @@ won't consume much memory on the remote system.
.Nm
has a website:
.Lk https://dev.yorhel.nl/ncdu
.
.Sh AUTHORS
Written by
.An Yorhel Aq Mt projects@yorhel.nl
.
.Sh BUGS
Directory hard links and firmlinks (MacOS) are not supported.
They are not detected as being hard links, and will thus get scanned and
counted multiple times.
They are not detected as being hard links and will thus get scanned and counted
multiple times.
.Pp
Some minor glitches may appear when displaying filenames that contain multibyte
or multicolumn characters.