eza

eza is a modern, maintained replacement for ls, built on exa.

README Sections: Options — Installation — Development

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eza is a modern, maintained replacement for the venerable file-listing command-line program ls that ships with Unix and Linux operating systems, giving it more features and better defaults. It uses colours to distinguish file types and metadata. It knows about symlinks, extended attributes, and Git. And it’s small, fast, and just one single binary.

By deliberately making some decisions differently, eza attempts to be a more featureful, more user-friendly version of ls.

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eza features not in exa (non-exhaustive):

• Fixes “The Grid Bug” introduced in exa 2021.
• Hyperlink support.
• Mount point details.
• Selinux context output.
• Git repo status output.
• Human readable relative dates.
• Several security fixes.
• Support for bright terminal colours.
• Many smaller bug fixes/changes!

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Try it!

Nix ❄️

If you already have Nix setup with flake support, you can try out eza with the nix run command:

nix run github:eza-community/eza

Nix will build eza and run it.

If you want to pass arguments this way, use e.g. nix run github:eza-community/eza -- -ol.

Installation

eza is available for Windows, macOS and Linux.

Cargo (crates.io)

If you already have a Rust environment set up, you can use the cargo install command:

cargo install eza

Cargo will build the eza binary and place it in $HOME/.local/share/cargo/bin/eza.

Cargo (git)

If you already have a Rust environment set up, you can use the cargo install command in your local clone of the repo:

git clone https://github.com/eza-community/eza.git
cd eza
cargo install --path .

Cargo will build the eza binary and place it in $HOME/.cargo.

Arch Linux

Eza is available in the [extra] repository of Arch Linux.

pacman -S eza

Debian and Ubuntu

Eza is available from deb.gierens.de. The GPG public key is in this repo under deb.asc.

First make sure you have the gpg command, and otherwise install it via:

sudo apt update
sudo apt install -y gpg

Then install eza via:

sudo mkdir -p /etc/apt/keyrings
wget -qO- https://raw.githubusercontent.com/eza-community/eza/main/deb.asc | sudo gpg --dearmor -o /etc/apt/keyrings/gierens.gpg
echo "deb [signed-by=/etc/apt/keyrings/gierens.gpg] http://deb.gierens.de stable main" | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/gierens.list
sudo chmod 644 /etc/apt/keyrings/gierens.gpg /etc/apt/sources.list.d/gierens.list
sudo apt update
sudo apt install -y eza

Nix (Linux, MacOS)

Note

Installing packages imperatively isn't idiomatic Nix, as this can lead to many issues.

Eza is available from Nixpkgs and from the flake in this repository.

For nix profile users:

nix profile install nixpkgs#eza

For nix-env users:

nix-env -i eza

Declarative Nix Installations

• Simple NixOS installation: rfaulhaber/dotfiles
• Using the flake via NixOS: hallettj/home.nix
• Using home-manager on NixOS: Misterio77/nix-config

Gentoo

On Gentoo, eza is available as a package sys-apps/eza:

emerge --ask sys-apps/eza

openSUSE

Eza is available at openSUSE:Factory/eza:

zypper ar https://download.opensuse.org/tumbleweed/repo/oss/ factory-oss
zypper in eza

The preceding repository also contains the Bash, Fish, and Zsh completions.

Fedora

Eza is available as the eza package in the official Fedora repository.

sudo dnf install eza

Void Linux

Eza is available as the eza package in the official Void Linux repository.

sudo xbps-install eza

Termux

Eza is available as the eza package in the official Termux repository.

pkg install eza

Brew (MacOS)

Eza is available from Homebrew.

To install eza, run:

brew install eza

MacPorts (macOS)

On macOS, eza is also available via MacPorts.

To install eza, run:

sudo port install eza

Winget (Windows)

Eza is available on Winget.

To install eza, run:

winget install eza-community.eza

Scoop (Windows)

Eza is available from Scoop.

To install eza, run:

scoop install eza

Completions

For zsh:

Note

Change ~/.zshrc to your preferred zsh config file.

Clone the repository:

git clone https://github.com/eza-community/eza.git

Add the completion path to your zsh configuration:

Replace <path_to_eza> with the actual path where you cloned the eza repository.

echo 'export FPATH="<path_to_eza>/completions/zsh:$FPATH"' >> ~/.zshrc

Reload your zsh configuration:

source ~/.zshrc

For zsh with homebrew:

In case zsh completions don't work out of the box with homebrew, add the following to your ~/.zshrc:

if type brew &>/dev/null; then
    FPATH="$(brew --prefix)/share/zsh/site-functions:${FPATH}"
    autoload -Uz compinit
    compinit
fi

For reference:

• https://docs.brew.sh/Shell-Completion#configuring-completions-in-zsh
• https://github.com/Homebrew/brew/issues/8984

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Click sections to expand.

Command-line options

Command-line options

eza’s options are almost, but not quite, entirely unlike ls’s.

Display options

• -1, --oneline: display one entry per line
• -G, --grid: display entries as a grid (default)
• -l, --long: display extended details and attributes
• -R, --recurse: recurse into directories
• -T, --tree: recurse into directories as a tree
• -x, --across: sort the grid across, rather than downwards
• -F, --classify: display type indicator by file names
• --colo[u]r: when to use terminal colours
• --colo[u]r-scale: highlight levels of file sizes distinctly
• --icons: display icons
• --no-icons: don't display icons (always overrides --icons)
• --hyperlink: display entries as hyperlinks
• -w, --width=(columns): set screen width in columns

Filtering options

• -a, --all: show hidden and 'dot' files
• -d, --list-dirs: list directories like regular files
• -L, --level=(depth): limit the depth of recursion
• -r, --reverse: reverse the sort order
• -s, --sort=(field): which field to sort by
• --group-directories-first: list directories before other files
• -D, --only-dirs: list only directories
• -f, --only-files: list only files
• --git-ignore: ignore files mentioned in .gitignore
• -I, --ignore-glob=(globs): glob patterns (pipe-separated) of files to ignore

Pass the --all option twice to also show the . and .. directories.

Long view options

These options are available when running with --long (-l):

• -b, --binary: list file sizes with binary prefixes
• -B, --bytes: list file sizes in bytes, without any prefixes
• -g, --group: list each file’s group
• -h, --header: add a header row to each column
• -H, --links: list each file’s number of hard links
• -i, --inode: list each file’s inode number
• -m, --modified: use the modified timestamp field
• -M, --mounts: Show mount details (Linux and MacOS only).
• -S, --blocksize: show size of allocated file system blocks
• -t, --time=(field): which timestamp field to use
• -u, --accessed: use the accessed timestamp field
• -U, --created: use the created timestamp field
• -X, --dereference: dereference symlinks for file information
• -Z, --context: list each file’s security context
• -@, --extended: list each file’s extended attributes and sizes
• --changed: use the changed timestamp field
• --git: list each file’s Git status, if tracked or ignored
• --git-repos: list each directory’s Git status, if tracked
• --git-repos-no-status: list whether a directory is a Git repository, but not its status (faster)
• --no-git: suppress Git status (always overrides --git, --git-repos, --git-repos-no-status)
• --time-style: how to format timestamps. valid timestamp styles are ‘default’, ‘iso’, ‘long-iso’, ‘full-iso’, ‘relative', or you can use a custom style with '+' as prefix. (Ex: "+%Y/%m/%d, %H:%M" => "2023/9/30, 12:00"). more about format syntax.
• --no-permissions: suppress the permissions field
• -o, --octal-permissions: list each file's permission in octal format
• --no-filesize: suppress the filesize field
• --no-user: suppress the user field
• --no-time: suppress the time field

Some of the options accept parameters:

• Valid --colo[u]r options are always, automatic (or auto for short), and never.
• Valid sort fields are accessed, changed, created, extension, Extension, inode, modified, name, Name, size, type, and none. Fields starting with a capital letter sort uppercase before lowercase. The modified field has the aliases date, time, and newest, while its reverse has the aliases age and oldest.
• Valid time fields are modified, changed, accessed, and created.
• Valid time styles are default, iso, long-iso, full-iso, and relative.

Development

Development

eza is written in Rust. You will need rustc version 1.56.1 or higher. The recommended way to install Rust for development is from the official download page, using rustup.

Once Rust is installed, you can compile eza with Cargo:

cargo build
cargo test

• The just command runner can be used to run some helpful development commands, in a manner similar to make. Run just --list to get an overview of what’s available.

• If you are compiling a copy for yourself, be sure to run cargo build --release or just build-release to benefit from release-mode optimisations. Copy the resulting binary, which will be in the target/release directory, into a folder in your $PATH. /usr/local/bin is usually a good choice.

• To compile and install the manual pages, you will need pandoc. The just man command will compile the Markdown into manual pages, which it will place in the target/man directory. To use them, copy them into a directory that man will read. /usr/local/share/man is usually a good choice.

• eza depends on libgit2 for certain features. If you’re unable to compile libgit2, you can opt out of Git support by running cargo build --no-default-features.

• If you intend to compile for musl, you will need to use the flag vendored-openssl if you want to get the Git feature working. The full command is cargo build --release --target=x86_64-unknown-linux-musl --features vendored-openssl,git.

Developing on Nix (experimental) ❄️

If you have a working Nix installation with flake support, you can use nix to manage your dev environment.

nix develop

The Nix Flake has a few features:

• Run nix flake check to run treefmt on the repo.
• Run nix build and manually test ./results/bin/eza -- <arguments> for easy debugging.
• Run nix build .#test to run cargo test via the flake.
• Run nix build .#clippy to lint with clippy (still work in progress).

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