elfindo

A parallel find tool for Linux

elfindo uses multi-threading and a combination of depth and breadth search to discover directory entries faster than the standard Linux GNU find utility. It provides basic filters (e.g. for name patterns and timestamps) and an option for JSON output.

The POSIX readdir() function doesn't provide a way to query the entries of a single directory in parallel. Thus, elfindo uses different threads for different directories. Consequently, you will only see a speed advantage over GNU find when scanning a path that contains multiple subdirectories.

If you need to run a command for each discovered directory entry, consider piping the output of elfindo to the GNU xargs utility, which also supports parallelism (xargs -P NUM_PROCESSES ...).

Usage

The built-in help (elfindo --help) provides simple examples to get started.

You can get elfindo pre-built for Linux from the Releases section.

Build Prerequisites

Building elfindo requires a C++17 compatible compiler, such as gcc version 8.x or higher.

Dependencies for Debian/Ubuntu

sudo apt install build-essential debhelper devscripts fakeroot git lintian

Dependencies for RHEL/CentOS

sudo yum install gcc-c++ git make rpm-build

On RHEL / CentOS 7.x: Prepare Environment with newer gcc Version

Skip these steps on RHEL / CentOS 8.0 or newer.

sudo yum install centos-release-scl # for CentOS
# ...or alternatively for RHEL: yum-config-manager --enable rhel-server-rhscl-7-rpms
sudo yum install devtoolset-8
scl enable devtoolset-8 bash # alternatively: source /opt/rh/devtoolset-8/enable

The scl enable command enters a shell in which the environment variables are pointing to a newer gcc version. (The standard gcc version of the system remains unchanged.) Use this shell to run make later. The resulting executable can run outside of this shell.

Build & Install

Start by cloning the main repository:

git clone https://github.com/breuner/elfindo.git
cd elfindo

make help will show you all build & install options.

This is the standard build command:

make -j $(nproc)

You can run elfindo directly from the bin subdir (bin/elfindo), but you probably want to run make rpm or make deb now to build a package and install it. On Ubuntu, run this:

make deb
sudo apt install ./packaging/elfindo*.deb

There you go. Happy finding!

Questions & Comments

In case of questions, comments, if something is missing to make elfindo more useful or if you would just like to share your thoughts, feel free to contact me: sven.breuner[at]gmail.com