• Statistics
  • Memory usage
  • Disk usage
    • Binary size
    • Package size
• Performance
  • System calls
  • Listing time
• Optimization
  • Getting some extra performance
  • Clifm and terminal emulators

Data retrieved with htop (resident memory in megabytes)

Data retrieved with du

¹ If compressed via upx(1) we get a much smaller binary size: 404k.

Data retrieved with pacman -Qi

Data retrieved with strace -c

¹ A third of these syscalls is used to check for file capabilities. If you don't need this check (most file managers have it disabled by default), you can run with --no-file-cap (note that on non-Linux systems this check is never performed). Without this check, the number of syscalls drops to 6,163.

Data retrieved with /bin/time -p.

As you can see, clifm is by itself quite fast by default. But if speed is still an issue, it is possible to get some extra performance:

1. Disable the file counter, used to print the number of files contained by listed directories. Disabling this option produces a nice performance boost.¹

2. Disable some features: icons (if enabled), columns, file sorting, directories first, file-capabilities check, file-extension check, symlinks resolution, Unicode, colors, and, if already running without colors, file-type indicators (classification):

clifm --no-colors --no-columns --no-classify --no-file-counter --no-unicode --no-dirs-first --sort=none --no-file-cap --no-file-ext --no-follow-symlinks

3. Run in light mode

4. Limit listed files. Because listing lots of files could be expensive and time consuming, you can also try to limit the number of files printed for each visited directory (see the mf command).

5. Run in stealth mode

6. Compile in/out a few features:

a) Compile with `-D_TOURBIN_QSORT` to use Alexey Tourbin faster qsort implementation instead of **qsort(3)**. \
b) Compile out features you don't need to get a bit smaller, and thereby faster, executable. For example, to compile out icons and translation support:

clang ... -D_TOURBIN_QSORT -D_NO_GETTEXT -D_NO_ICONS ...

For more information consult the compiling features in/out section.

¹ Disable the files counter either via the --no-files-counter command-line option, the FilesCounter option in the configuration file or the fc command.

Despite the above, however, it is important to bear in mind that listing speed does not only depend on the program's code and enabled features, but also on the terminal's rendering speed.¹ Old, basic terminal emulators like Xterm, Aterm, and the kernel built-in console are quite slow compared to more modern ones like Urxvt, Lxterminal, ST, or Alacritty, to name just a few.²

¹ On this topic, see this excellent article written by Anarcat. See also https://stackoverflow.com/questions/3857052/why-is-printing-to-stdout-so-slow-can-it-be-sped-up.

² If using Xterm, setting the fastScroll resource to true in your ~/.Xresources file produces a quite decent performance boost in terms of rendering speed: XTerm*fastScroll: true. Even thus, nonetheless, it is far behind modern terminal emulators, specially when it comes to large directories.