** Description changed:
Currently `tree -dh`/`tree -h` simply shows the size of the directory
nodes that tend to be 4K in a default ext4 installation with 4K block
sizes. While this is not very useful in terms of UX, it does however
have it's use by not spending a whole lot of IO on calculating recursive
sizes. However, in addition to the current mode, it would be great to
have an option, that recursively adds up the size of the its contents
and displays the total size of the directory (inclusive of all hidden
and dot files), instead of just the directory node size.
UPDATE: There's the "--du" option, that the upstream author was gracious
enough to point out to me. This is great and solves the problem in
theory.
But in practice, when used with large trees (for example the $HOME
folder), the usefulness vanishes rather quickly due to the following
reasons:
1. Output is usually very large. So, it isn't very practical to use this
option in non-automated scenario. So we probably want to limit depth
with "-L" in most occasions.
2. However, while using "-L", "--du" behaves in a way where it only
- calculates partial sizes for the leaf trees, that are larger than the
- given depth. So, this limits it's practical usefulness as well.
+ calculates partial sizes for the leaf trees that are larger than the
+ given depth. While this is probably the best default to have, with the
+ exception of some specific scenarios where this is what is required,
+ this limits it's practical usefulness as well with most large trees.
- 3. While the above is technically a right decision for the same reasons
- as tree defaulting to just show size of the directory as block sizes,
- this is misleading since there's no way to differentiate what's a
- partial size, and what's the correct real calculation in the above
- scenario.
+ 3. In the above scenario, the problem is compounded by the fact that one
+ can easily be mislead, since there's currently no way to differentiate
+ what's a partial size, and what's the correct real calculation of the
+ full size.
POTENTIAL SOLUTIONS:
- 1 & 2. It would nice to have an additional option that calculates the forces
the tree traversal for the calculating sizes alone, so that real sizes are
displayed when used along with the "-L" option. This can also be in the form of
another depth, that default to say "-1", meaning a full traversal, or positive
numbers for limiting the size traversals.
-
- 3. This can easily be solved by suffixing the size with something, for the
sake of a better suffix "*".
+ 1 & 2. It would be nice to have an additional option that calculates the
+ forces the tree traversal for the calculating sizes alone, so that real
+ sizes are displayed when used along with the "-L" option. This can also
+ be in the form of another depth, that default to say "-1", meaning a
+ full traversal, or positive numbers for limiting the size traversals.
+ 3. This can easily be solved by suffixing the size with something, for
+ the sake of a better suffix "*".
ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 18.10
Package: tree 1.7.0-5
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 4.18.0-13.14-generic 4.18.17
Uname: Linux 4.18.0-13-generic x86_64
NonfreeKernelModules: zfs zunicode zavl icp zcommon znvpair
ApportVersion: 2.20.10-0ubuntu13.1
Architecture: amd64
CurrentDesktop: GNOME
Date: Mon Jan 28 18:49:37 2019
Dependencies:
gcc-8-base 8.2.0-7ubuntu1
libc6 2.28-0ubuntu1
libgcc1 1:8.2.0-7ubuntu1
libidn2-0 2.0.5-1
libunistring2 0.9.10-1ubuntu1
InstallationDate: Installed on 2019-01-01 (27 days ago)
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 18.10 "Cosmic Cuttlefish" - Release amd64
(20181017.3)
SourcePackage: tree
UpgradeStatus: No upgrade log present (probably fresh install)
modified.conffile..etc.apport.crashdb.conf: [modified]
mtime.conffile..etc.apport.crashdb.conf: 2019-01-15T04:51:59.517661
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https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1813601
Title:
tree and better recursive directory sizing
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