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diff --git a/src/content/en/blog/2021/01/26/remembering-ann.adoc b/src/content/en/blog/2021/01/26/remembering-ann.adoc new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6786b3c --- /dev/null +++ b/src/content/en/blog/2021/01/26/remembering-ann.adoc @@ -0,0 +1,216 @@ += ANN: remembering - Add memory to dmenu, fzf and similar tools +:categories: ann + +:remembering: https://euandreh.xyz/remembering/ +:dmenu: https://tools.suckless.org/dmenu/ +:fzf: https://github.com/junegunn/fzf + +Today I pushed v0.1.0 of {remembering}[remembering], a tool to enhance the +interactive usability of menu-like tools, such as {dmenu}[dmenu] and {fzf}[fzf]. + +== Previous solution + +:yeganesh: https://dmwit.com/yeganesh/ + +I previously used {yeganesh}[yeganesh] to fill this gap, but as I started to +rely less on Emacs, I added fzf as my go-to tool for doing fuzzy searching on +the terminal. But I didn't like that fzf always showed the same order of +things, when I would only need 3 or 4 commonly used files. + +For those who don't know: yeganesh is a wrapper around dmenu that will remember +your most used programs and put them on the beginning of the list of +executables. This is very convenient for interactive prolonged use, as with +time the things you usually want are right at the very beginning. + +But now I had this thing, yeganesh, that solved this problem for dmenu, but +didn't for fzf. + +I initially considered patching yeganesh to support it, but I found it more +coupled to dmenu than I would desire. I'd rather have something that knows +nothing about dmenu, fzf or anything, but enhances tools like those in a useful +way. + +== Implementation + +:v-010: https://euandre.org/git/remembering/tree/remembering?id=v0.1.0 +:getopts: https://www.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9699919799/utilities/getopts.html +:sort: https://www.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9699919799/utilities/sort.html +:awk: https://www.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9699919799/utilities/awk.html +:spencer-quote: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Spencer#cite_note-3 + +Other than being decoupled from dmenu, another improvement I though that could +be made on top of yeganesh is the programming language choice. Instead of +Haskell, I went with POSIX sh. Sticking to POSIX sh makes it require less +build-time dependencies. There aren't any, actually. Packaging is made much +easier due to that. + +The good thing is that the program itself is small enough ({v-010}[119 lines] on +v0.1.0) that POSIX sh does the job just fine, combined with other POSIX +utilities such as {getopts}[getopts], {sort}[sort] and {awk}[awk]. + +The behaviour is: given a program that will read from STDIN and write a single +entry to STDOUT, `remembering` wraps that program, and rearranges STDIN so that +previous choices appear at the beginning. + +Where you would do: + +[source,sh] +---- +$ seq 5 | fzf + + 5 + 4 + 3 + 2 +> 1 + 5/5 +> +---- + +And every time get the same order of numbers, now you can write: + +[source,sh] +---- +$ seq 5 | remembering -p seq-fzf -c fzf + + 5 + 4 + 3 + 2 +> 1 + 5/5 +> +---- + +On the first run, everything is the same. If you picked 4 on the previous +example, the following run would be different: + +[source,sh] +---- +$ seq 5 | remembering -p seq-fzf -c fzf + + 5 + 3 + 2 + 1 +> 4 + 5/5 +> +---- + +As time passes, the list would adjust based on the frequency of your choices. + +I aimed for reusability, so that I could wrap diverse commands with +`remembering` and it would be able to work. To accomplish that, a "profile" +(the `-p something` part) stores data about different runs separately. + +I took the idea of building something small with few dependencies to other +places too: - the manpages are written in troff directly; - the tests are just +more POSIX sh files; - and a POSIX Makefile to `check` and `install`. + +I was aware of the value of sticking to coding to standards, but I had past +experience mostly with programming language standards, such as ECMAScript, +Common Lisp, Scheme, or with IndexedDB or DOM APIs. It felt good to rediscover +these nice POSIX tools, which makes me remember of a quote by +{spencer-quote}[Henry Spencer]: + +____ +Those who do not understand Unix are condemned to reinvent it, poorly. +____ + +== Usage examples + +Here are some functions I wrote myself that you may find useful: + +=== Run a command with fzf on `$PWD` + +[source,sh] +---- +f() { + profile="$f-shell-function(pwd | sed -e 's_/_-_g')" + file="$(git ls-files | \ + remembering -p "$profile" \ + -c "fzf --select-1 --exit -0 --query \"$2\" --preview 'cat {}'")" + if [ -n "$file" ]; then + # shellcheck disable=2068 + history -s f $@ + history -s "$1" "$file" + "$1" "$file" +fi +} +---- + +This way I can run `f vi` or `f vi config` at the root of a repository, and the +list of files will always appear on the most used order. Adding `pwd` to the +profile allows it to not mix data for different repositories. + +=== Copy password to clipboard + +:pass: https://www.passwordstore.org/ + +[source,sh] +---- +choice="$(find "$HOME/.password-store" -type f | \ + grep -Ev '(.git|.gpg-id)' | \ + sed -e "s|$HOME/.password-store/||" -e 's/\.gpg$//' | \ + remembering -p password-store \ + -c 'dmenu -l 20 -i')" + + +if [ -n "$choice" ]; then + pass show "$choice" -c +fi +---- + +Adding the above to a file and binding it to a keyboard shortcut, I can access +the contents of my {pass}[password store], with the entries ordered by usage. + +=== Replacing yeganesh + +Where I previously had: + +[source,sh] +---- +exe=$(yeganesh -x) && exec $exe +---- + +Now I have: + +[source,sh] +---- +exe=$(dmenu_path | remembering -p dmenu-exec -c dmenu) && exec $exe +---- + +This way, the executables appear on order of usage. + +If you don't have `dmenu_path`, you can get just the underlying `stest` tool +that looks at the executables available in your `$PATH`. Here's a juicy +one-liner to do it: + +[source,sh] +---- +$ wget -O- https://dl.suckless.org/tools/dmenu-5.0.tar.gz | \ + tar Ozxf - dmenu-5.0/arg.h dmenu-5.0/stest.c | \ + sed 's|^#include "arg.h"$|// #include "arg.h"|' | \ + cc -xc - -o stest +---- + +With the `stest` utility you'll be able to list executables in your `$PATH` and +pipe them to dmenu or something else yourself: + +[source,sh] +---- +$ (IFS=:; ./stest -flx $PATH;) | sort -u | remembering -p another-dmenu-exec -c dmenu | sh +---- + +In fact, the code for `dmenu_path` is almost just like that. + +== Conclusion + +:packaged: https://euandre.org/git/package-repository/ + +For my personal use, I've {packaged}[packaged] `remembering` for GNU Guix and +Nix. Packaging it to any other distribution should be trivial, or just +downloading the tarball and running `[sudo] make install`. + +Patches welcome! |