Re: RFS: FSlint - File System lint

[Pádraig Brady <P@draigBrady.com>]

Rogério Brito wrote:
> Hi, Pádraig.
> 
> On May 22 2006, Pádraig Brady wrote:
> 
>>Description: A toolkit to find redundant disk usage
>> FSlint is a toolkit to find redundant disk usage, like duplicate files
>> for example. It includes a GUI as well as a command line interface.
> 
> 
> This is a class of tools that interest me quite a lot.
> 
> Would you, please, care to explain in the long description how it
> differs from fdupes (which is what I have been using for eliminating
> duplicate files)?

First of all, fslint is a suite of tools. As well as duplicate files,
it can be used to find temporary files, help clean unused packages,
troublesome filenames, ...

OK taking a quick look at fdupes:

fdupes is CLI only
fslint has both CLI and (GTK) GUI
http://www.pixelbeat.org/fslint/FSlint-2.08-pt_BR.png

fdupes is implemented in C
fslint is shell (CLI) and python (GUI)

fslint is FAST and scalable:
$ time ./findup --gui /usr/share/doc > /dev/null
real    0m1.829s
$ time ./fdupes -q -r /usr/share/doc > /dev/null
real    0m6.981s
I have found nothing as fast as fslint for finding duplicates.

fslint can merge duplicates using hardlinks.
Note this isn't a trivial addition to fdupes.
fslint has very sophisticated hardlink processing,
which I verified fdupes does not handle.
This is required in the case where one wants
to incrementally merge using hardlinks multiple trees.

fdupes hasn't been updated in 4 years (since June 2002)
fslint is updated actively: http://www.pixelbeat.org/fslint/NEWS.html

cheers,
Pádraig.