pyxdu

Pyxdu — display the output of "du" disk usage tool in a window.

Pyxdu is a Python port of "xdu", an X window disk usage utility. Pyxdu is a retro tool that tries to follow the style of 1990s in its visual design.

Example

Run "du" to show disk usage for directory /usr in megabytes, pipe the output to "pyxdu", sort directories in numerical order:

du -m /usr | pyxdu -n

Installation

You can install pyxdu on Python 3.7 or newer using pip:

pip install pyxdu

Description

Pyxdu is a program for displaying a graphical tree of disk space utilization as reported by the UNIX utility "du". The user can navigate through the tree structure and change the order of the displayed information. The window is divided up into several columns, each of which is one level deeper in the directory hierarchy (from left to right). Boxes are drawn for each directory. The amount of vertical space occupied by each box is directly proportional to the amount of disk space consumed by it and all of its children. The name of each directory and the amount of data are displayed provided that there is enough space within its box. Any space at the "bottom" of a box not covered by its children to the right represents the space consumed by files in that directory (as opposed to space from its children).

There are several command line options available.

• -h --help
  • Show help message.
• -n
  • Sort in numerical order.
• --dump <file>
  • Dump tree as JSON for debugging.
• -c --columns <num>
  • Display <num> columns [default: 6].
• ...

Mouse Actions

The user can move up or down the tree by clicking the left mouse on a directory box. If the left most box is selected, the display will move up one level (assuming you are not already at the root). If any other box is selected, it will be placed against the left edge of the window, and the display will be rescaled appropriately. At any time the middle mouse will bring you back to the root. Clicking the right mouse will exit the program.

Keystrokes

• 1-9, 0
  • Sets the number of columns in the display (0 = 10).
• /
  • Goto the root.
• q, Escape
  • Exit the program.
• ...

Development

Development requirements:

• Python 3.7 or newer
• Poetry

Set up a development environment:

git clone https://github.com/vlasovskikh/pyxdu.git
cd pyxdu
poetry install
poetry run pyxdu --help
du | poetry run pyxdu

Authors

• Andrey Vlasovskikh

Credits

The original tool xdu was released by Phil Dykstra on 1991-09-04. The most recent version xdu 3.0 was released on 1994-06-05.