Canop/broot

Broot is a terminal-based file browser that provides a multi-panel interface for navigating file systems, managing git status, and previewing file contents. It supports advanced features such as composite pattern searching, hex and image previews, and customizable skins with Nerd Fonts or VS Code icon themes. The system includes a robust configuration framework, shell integration for launching and changing directories, and a client-server architecture for managing instances via Unix sockets.

31 changes.

The project underwent a major architectural shift to support a multi-panel interface, introducing dedicated preview areas and a modular state management system. This period saw the extensive development of a comprehensive preview engine capable of rendering images, hex dumps, syntax-highlighted text, and TTY output, alongside significant refactoring of the tree building, command parsing, and configuration systems.

14 changes.

This period focused on significantly expanding broot's capabilities by introducing a Staging Area, a Trash view, and Sixel image support, while enhancing the visual experience with new skins, Nerd Fonts icons, and improved syntax highlighting. The project also modernized its core infrastructure by migrating the CLI to Clap 4, restructuring configuration files, and establishing a robust multi-host release pipeline for binary distribution.

Users can now preview images using the Sixel protocol in addition to the existing Kitty graphics protocol. A new \graphics-display\ configuration option (and \BROOT\_GRAPHICS\_PROTOCOL\ environment variable) allows selecting between \auto\ (default), \kitty\, \sixel\, or \none\. The system now includes logic to fit and center images within the terminal area, handle tmux nesting, and manage image rendering lifecycles, including specific fixes for Konsole to prevent cell-box artifacts and ensure stale images are cleared correctly.

src/graphics · high confidence

The application now supports displaying Sixel images in compatible terminals. It detects Sixel capability via Primary Device Attributes and queries the terminal's maximum graphics geometry via XTSMGRAPHICS to ensure images fit within the display area. The implementation includes specific fixes for Konsole: it flattens image alpha onto the letterbox background to prevent transparency artifacts, pads images to whole 6-pixel bands to match Sixel encoding requirements, and performs a full-screen redraw to clear stale Sixel data when content changes. Additionally, it handles tmux passthrough by escaping control characters and repainting letterbox areas that Konsole clears around the Sixel cell box.

src/sixel · high confidence

A new man page for broot has been added, documenting the tool's command-line interface, including flags for controlling file display (such as dates, permissions, and sizes), sorting options, git integration, and the --color setting. This provides users with accessible documentation for the broot and br commands directly via the shell.

man · high confidence

Users can now preview binary files in a hexadecimal format. This new feature, implemented in the \src/hex\ module, introduces a \HexView\ component that maps file contents using \memmap2\ and displays them with categorized byte styling (null, ASCII graphic, whitespace, etc.) and scrollable navigation.

src/hex · high confidence

The website now highlights code syntax using Highlight.js v11.11.1 and allows users to switch between different language representations of the same code snippet via tabs. Specifically, the new \broot.js\ script initializes highlighting and registers aliases (e.g., treating Hjson as Rust), while \tab-langs.js\ groups adjacent code blocks with matching languages (such as Hjson, JSON, and TOML) and injects clickable tabs to toggle their visibility.

website/src/js · high confidence

The application now renders images in high resolution using the Kitty Graphics Protocol when running in compatible terminals. This change introduces automatic detection for Kitty, Ghostty, Rio, and iTerm2 (version 3.6.6+), as well as version-aware detection for WezTerm (builds from 2022-01-05 onwards). Users benefit from sharper image previews in these environments, with the system falling back to Unicode placeholders or standard rendering if the protocol is unsupported or disabled.

src/kitty · high confidence

The \resources/icons/vscode/data\ directory now contains the foundational data structures for file icon recognition. This includes \extension\_to\_icon\_name\_map.rs\ for mapping file extensions to icon types, \double\_extension\_to\_icon\_name\_map.rs\ for compound extensions (e.g., \.tar.gz\), \file\_name\_to\_icon\_name\_map.rs\ for specific filenames (e.g., \package.json\), and \icon\_name\_to\_icon\_code\_point\_map.rs\ which defines the actual icon glyphs. This change establishes the data layer required for the application to display appropriate icons for a wide variety of file types.

resources/icons/vscode/data · high confidence

A new Staging Area feature allows users to select and manage a set of files for later actions. This implementation adds the core data structures (\Stage\, \FilteredStage\) to track selected paths and support filtering by pattern, along with the UI state (\StageState\) that renders the list, handles scrolling, selection, and displays file counts and sizes.

src/stage · high confidence

A new networking layer has been added to enable client-server interaction using Unix domain sockets. This includes a server implementation that listens for commands and root-path queries, a client for sending these requests, and a message protocol for serialization. The server now validates server names to prevent duplicate instances from silently overtaking existing ones, and it automatically cleans up stale socket files. Additionally, the socket file path is adapted for Termux environments where /tmp is not writable.

src/net · high confidence

Added a new \file\_sum\ module that computes consolidated directory statistics (size, file count, and last modified date) using a background thread pool and a cache to avoid redundant computations. The implementation handles hard links on Unix by tracking inode and device IDs to prevent double-counting, excludes specific system paths like \/proc\ and \/run\ from summation, and allows configuration of the number of worker threads.

_src/file\sum · high confidence

The application now supports multiple simultaneous panels, allowing users to navigate and interact with files in separate views. A new panel system manages these views, including a dedicated preview panel for inspecting files and a staging area for managing git operations. The layout automatically adjusts when panels are opened or closed, and users can switch focus between panels using keyboard shortcuts. This change also introduces specific panel purposes (such as argument edition and preview) to handle context-specific interactions, enhancing the overall workflow for complex file management tasks.

src/app · high confidence

The file tree view is now implemented in a new \src/tree\ module, which manages the display of the file hierarchy. This change introduces support for sorting files by type (with directories listed first or last), displaying git status information, and handling symbolic links with protection against circular references. It also adds the ability to sanitize display names by stripping terminal escape sequences and newlines to prevent terminal injection, and supports double file extensions for icon resolution.

src/tree · high confidence

The src/browser module has been introduced to encapsulate the application state responsible for displaying the file tree. This new BrowserState struct manages the core tree data, filtering, and navigation logic, including handling path canonicalization on non-Windows platforms and managing background search tasks. It serves as the primary screen state for the file browser interface.

src/browser · high confidence

Users can now run the :fs command to open a dedicated view listing all currently mounted filesystems, showing details such as filesystem type, disk type, used/total space, and a usage bar. This view supports filtering by pattern and allows navigation between mounts, with the system automatically selecting the mount corresponding to the current file path when opened.

src/filesystems · high confidence

Users can now enable the Nerd Fonts icon theme by setting \icon\_theme: nerdfont\ in their configuration. This change introduces a new icon set that maps file extensions, double extensions, and specific filenames to Nerd Fonts symbols. The theme includes mappings for a wide range of file types, including support for Fennel (.fnl), Julia, and C++ (.cc) files, as well as specific icons for configuration files like TOML and YAML.

resources/icons/nerdfont · high confidence

Users can now preview TTY output files using the new :preview\_tty verb, which renders terminal escape sequences correctly in the preview panel. This is supported by a new src/tty module that parses and displays styled terminal lines. Additionally, verb execution has been refactored to support more flexible command patterns, including the ability to define verbs that execute once per selection or merge multiple selections into a single command, and to specify a working directory for external processes.

src/verb · high confidence

This change introduces the \content\_search\ module, enabling users to search for text patterns within file contents. The implementation includes a \ContentMatch\ struct that displays the matched text along with surrounding context, and fixes a panic that occurred when searching for empty patterns at the end of lines. It also corrects an off-by-one error in \line\_count\_at\_pos\, ensuring that matches at the start of a line report the correct line number. The module uses \memmap2\ for efficient file mapping and includes logic to skip binary files and respect a configurable maximum file size.

_src/content\search · high confidence

The default skin configuration now includes several new color themes for users to choose from. This update adds the Catppuccin Macchiato and Mocha skins, the Tokyo Night skin, the Native 16-color skin (which uses ANSI colors 0-15 to adapt to the terminal emulator's theme), and both Solarized Dark and Solarized Light skins. Additionally, the default skin set now includes the Dark Blue, Dark Orange, Dark Gruvbox, and White skins, providing a wider variety of visual styles out of the box.

resources/default-conf/skins · high confidence

The project documentation has been migrated to a new static website built with the ddoc generator. This update introduces a redesigned user interface featuring a searchable navigation menu, a table of contents that highlights the currently viewed section, and previous/next page links to improve content traversal. The site structure is defined in a new configuration file (ddoc.hjson), and deployment is now handled via a dedicated script (deploy.sh) that builds the site and synchronizes it to the production server.

website · high confidence

The image preview module has been rewritten to support rendering images via the Kitty graphics protocol and Sixel, including specific fixes for Konsole Sixel artifacts and padding. It now adds support for rendering SVG files as images in the preview pane and introduces a double-line rendering method for terminals that do not support inline graphics. The new system also includes caching for resized images to improve performance and better handling of background colors for transparent images.

src/image · high confidence

The pattern matching system has been rewritten to support composite patterns, allowing users to combine multiple search criteria using AND, OR, and NOT operators. This change introduces dedicated pattern types for searching file content (both exact text and regular expressions) alongside the existing name and path searches. The new engine also includes a \Candidate\ struct to handle file metadata and a \SearchMode\ configuration system, enabling more complex and flexible filtering logic in the interface.

src/pattern · high confidence

The preview panel now supports displaying directory contents as a tree, showing unified diffs for files with uncommitted changes, and rendering images, text, hex, and TTY outputs. It also includes a new preview transformer system that allows external commands to convert files (such as Office documents) into previewable formats. The panel handles edge cases like zero-length system files and provides filtering and search capabilities across all preview types.

src/preview · high confidence

The application now includes a dedicated text view component that renders file contents with syntax highlighting and line numbers. This feature supports multiple syntax themes (such as GitHub, Solarized, and MochaDark) which can be selected via configuration, and it optimizes performance for large files by using memory mapping and lazy loading to maintain responsiveness.

src/syntactic · high confidence

A new trash management interface has been added, allowing users to view deleted items with optional Size and Deletion Date columns. The view supports sorting by date or size, respects existing tree options for display formatting, and integrates with the application's state management for navigation and selection.

src/trash · high confidence

The repository now includes an AGENTS.md file explicitly restricting AI agent contributions to diagnostic and documentation assistance, prohibiting them from opening issues or submitting pull requests. A bacon.toml configuration file has been added to streamline the development workflow with predefined jobs for checking, testing, and linting. Additionally, a build.rs script now automatically generates shell completion scripts for Bash, Elvish, Fish, PowerShell, and Zsh during compilation, and a features.md document details optional compilation features such as clipboard support and Sixel graphics.

(repo-wide) · high confidence

The application now supports a unified diff preview for files, allowing users to see line-by-line changes between the working tree and HEAD. This feature is powered by a new \src/git/diff.rs\ module that utilizes the \gix\ library to compute diffs. Additionally, git status tracking has been enhanced with a new \LineStatusComputer\ in \src/git/status.rs\ to provide more granular file status information, and the ignore logic in \src/git/ignore.rs\ has been refactored to better handle \.gitignore\ and \.ignore\ files, including support for rules in \.ignore\ files outside of git directories.

src/git · high confidence

The display logic has been reorganized from a single large module into a set of focused submodules (areas, cell\_size, col, displayable\_tree, flags\_display, git\_status\_display, layout\_instructions, luma, matched\_string, num\_format, permissions, screen, status\_line, viewport). This structural change improves code maintainability and separation of concerns without altering user-facing behavior.

src/display · high confidence

The tree-building logic in \src/tree\_build\ has been restructured from a single monolithic file into a modular architecture consisting of \bid\, \bline\, \build\_report\, and \builder\ modules. This change introduces an internal \BLine\ structure and an arena-based ID system (\BId\) to manage tree nodes during the build process, separating the internal construction phase from the final display representation. Users benefit from improved maintainability and potential performance gains in tree traversal and search operations, although the external API and user-facing behavior remain consistent.

_src/tree\build · high confidence

The command-line interface now uses Clap 4 (upgraded from Clap 3) and derives its argument structure directly from the \Args\ struct in \src/cli/args.rs\. This change standardizes how launch flags (such as \--max-depth\, \--color\, and \--conf\) are parsed and validated, ensuring consistent behavior for users invoking broot from the terminal. The migration also introduces \clap\_help\ for improved help text formatting and updates internal argument handling in \src/cli/mod.rs\ and \src/cli/install\_launch\_args.rs\ to align with the new derive-based model.

src/cli · high confidence

Users can now define separate visual styles for the active (focused) panel and inactive (unfocused) panels in their configuration. The skin system has been refactored to support a dual-style model where each skin entry can specify a primary style and an optional secondary style (separated by a slash) for the unfocused state, allowing for clearer visual hierarchy when navigating between panels.

src/skin · high confidence

On Unix systems, when user or group names cannot be resolved (for example, in statically linked builds without NSS), the application now displays the numeric UID or GID instead of a placeholder like "???". This change ensures that permission information remains visible and accurate even when name resolution fails.

src/permissions · high confidence

The help interface has been refactored to allow users to filter the list of available verbs and search modes by typing keywords. The help content is now generated dynamically from modular components, displaying searchable tables for verbs (including names, shortcuts, keys, and descriptions) and search modes (including prefixes, types, and examples). This makes it easier to discover and understand the application's capabilities without scrolling through static documentation.

src/help · high confidence

The configuration system has been significantly restructured, introducing a new \Conf\ struct that supports a wider range of settings including graphics display modes, terminal title customization, and preview transformers. Default configuration files are now managed via a dedicated resource directory and written to the user's config directory on first run. The system now supports importing other configuration files, allows for conditional imports based on terminal light/dark mode, and introduces new configuration parameters such as \capture\_mouse\, \cols\_order\, \default\_flags\, \icon\_theme\, \modal\ mode settings, and \special\_paths\ handling. Verb configurations have been expanded to support multiple keys, file extension filtering, panel targeting, and shell command execution.

src/conf · high confidence

The \src/content\_type\ module now implements a two-step heuristic to determine if a file is binary: first checking against a static list of known binary extensions (e.g., .exe, .zip, .jpg) and then inspecting the first few bytes against known magic number signatures (e.g., gzip, zip, elf). This replaces previous logic, addressing issues where empty files were incorrectly treated as binary and false content matches occurred in compressed files. Users will see more accurate text/binary classification, particularly for compressed archives and files with ambiguous extensions.

_src/content\type · high confidence

The default configuration has been restructured into two new files: \conf.hjson\ and \verbs.hjson\. \conf.hjson\ provides commented examples for setting default flags, terminal titles, modal mode, special paths (including \/media\ and \\~/.config\), and content search limits. \verbs.hjson\ defines default verbs such as \edit\, \git\_diff\, \zip\, and \terminal\, along with key bindings for panel navigation and examples for shell-based operations.

resources/default-conf · high confidence

This change introduces a comprehensive custom error type system (src/errors.rs) to provide detailed, user-friendly messages for configuration, git, image, and launch failures. It adds a new key binding module (src/keys.rs) that leverages the crokey library to manage reserved keys and modal-mode restrictions. Additionally, it implements a background task synchronization mechanism (src/task\_sync.rs) using a 'Dam' pattern to allow computations to be interrupted by user input, and a file watcher (src/watcher.rs) with event debouncing to trigger UI refreshes efficiently.

src · high confidence

The build-scripts directory now provides a complete, new release chain for building and distributing broot binaries. This includes a new \build-all-targets.sh\ script that supports multi-host staging (pushing builds from Mac and Linux to a shared server) to assemble a full release matrix, and a \deploy.sh\ script that packages the release and rsyncs it to the download server. The pipeline introduces a \clipboard\ feature for official macOS builds, adds a legacy \x86\_64-linux\ symlink for third-party installers, and enforces strict binary verification (checking architecture and fixing duplicate dylib issues on macOS). It also standardizes release IDs using fixed-length commit abbreviations and allows staging from dirty trees with explicit warnings.

build-scripts · high confidence

The path handling module has been restructured to introduce a new \PathAnchor\ enum and \path\_from\ function, enabling more precise resolution of relative paths based on whether the context is the current directory or its parent. Tilde (\\~\) expansion is now explicitly handled via \untilde\, and path normalization logic has been updated to correctly process parent directory tokens (\..\) while preserving trailing slashes. Additionally, a new \SpecialPaths\ system allows users to define custom display and listing directives (show, list, sum) for specific path patterns using glob matching, with a default configuration that prevents entering or summing \/proc\.

src/path · high confidence

The \src/shell\_install\ module has been rewritten to manage the installation and upgrading of the \br\ shell function across all supported shells. This change introduces a structured installation process that writes shell-specific scripts (for Bash/Zsh, Fish, Nushell, and PowerShell) to XDG-compliant data directories and creates symlinks in configuration directories. It handles sourcing the function in shell init files (like \.bashrc\, \.zshrc\, \config.nu\, and PowerShell profiles), detects the current installation state to avoid redundant prompts, and ensures the function is available for launching broot with features like \cd\ from the shell. The Nushell script has been updated to version 7, and the PowerShell installer now correctly detects the profile path and handles spaces in paths.

_src/shell\install · high confidence

The website now uses a new CSS skin (ddoc) that introduces a GitHub-themed code highlighting style, a responsive navigation menu with mobile hamburger support, and visual enhancements for tables and table-of-contents items. Users will see improved readability for code blocks, a consistent color scheme with CSS variables for theming, and better mobile usability for the site navigation.

website/src/css · high confidence

The command processing logic has been restructured into a dedicated module, introducing a new \Command\ enum to distinguish between editing a verb invocation, executing a finished verb, triggering internal actions, and handling pattern edits. This change implements a new parsing system in \CommandParts\ that separates search patterns from verb invocations using specific delimiters, and adds a robust completion engine in \completion.rs\ that provides context-aware suggestions for verbs, file paths, and syntax themes. Additionally, the \PanelInput\ component now manages key events and mouse interactions to build these commands, supporting features like tab-completion cycling and direct internal verb execution without user input.

src/command · high confidence

The icon rendering logic has been refactored into a pluggable architecture via the new \IconPlugin\ trait and \FontPlugin\ implementation. This change consolidates previously separate icon sources into a single plugin that accepts configuration paths, enabling support for both 'vscode' and 'nerdfont' icon themes through a unified interface. Users can now select their preferred icon set, which determines the visual representation of files and directories in the tree view.

src/icon · high confidence

The syntax highlighting engine now uses an updated set of Sublime Text syntax definitions sourced from the bat project, improving code preview accuracy for a wider range of file types.

resources/syntect · high confidence

Added a new test file \tests/search\_strings.rs\ that verifies the behavior of the search string pattern engine, specifically focusing on edge cases for composite patterns. The tests cover simple fuzzy and exact matching, regex patterns, single operators (AND/OR), negation logic, and complex operator precedence with and without parentheses.

tests · high confidence

The project now requires Rust 1.85 and uses the 2024 edition, as specified in the Cargo.toml manifest. This update aligns the build environment with the latest stable Rust standards and may require users to update their local Rust toolchains to compile the software.

(dependencies) · high confidence

Written by watchdog.canine.dev from the codebase's own history, inside the signed delivery this page is composed from.

• CAI 68 → 66 (-2.6)
• Rubric changed (rubric-2026.09.8 → rubric-2026.09.17) — scores are not directly comparable.

• Code Health 81 → 80 (-0.3)
• Architecture 97 → 80 (-16.6)
• Maturity 56 → 56 (-0.0)
• Readiness 67 → 64 (-2.6)
• Security 96 → 98 (+2.5)

• Documentation: no installation or build instructions (README.md)
• Documentation: no usage examples (README.md)
• Hotspot: src/command/panel_input.rs (src/command/panel_input.rs)
• Hotspot: src/display/displayable_tree.rs (src/display/displayable_tree.rs)
• Hotspot: src/launchable.rs (src/launchable.rs)
• Hotspot: src/preview/unified_diff_view.rs (src/preview/unified_diff_view.rs)
• Hotspot: src/syntactic/text_view.rs (src/syntactic/text_view.rs)
• Hotspot: src/tree/tree.rs (src/tree/tree.rs)
• Hotspot: src/tree_build/builder.rs (src/tree_build/builder.rs)
• Hotspot: src/verb/execution_builder.rs (src/verb/execution_builder.rs)
• Medium advisory (unsound): RUSTSEC-2026-0183 (Cargo.lock)
• Medium advisory (unsound): RUSTSEC-2026-0184 (Cargo.lock)
• Repeated repair: src/image/zune_compat.rs (src/image/zune_compat.rs)

• Ambiguous naming and overlapping intent. no_verb_status appears to be a specific case of get_status (when no verb is active), but the signatures differ significantly in parameters (missing app_state/cc in one). This suggests no_verb_status might be a legacy or specialized helper that duplicates logic or state requirements of the general get_status.
• Boundary-crossing change coupling: browser_state.rs ↔ help_verbs.rs (src/browser/browser_state.rs)
• ClassTooLong: PreviewState (src/preview/preview_state.rs)
• Data duplication and potential inconsistency between container and state. AppPanelsAndInputs exposes a method to retrieve the other panel's path, while AppState holds the same data as a property. This creates two sources of truth for the same concept.
• Outdated: image
• Outdated: lfs-core
• Projects may be oversized for their cohesion

• 17 commits — 13 feature/other, 4 fixes

• (root) — 5 commits
• (repo) — 3 commits
• resources/icons — 2 commits
• build-scripts/deploy.sh — 1 commit
• resources/default-conf — 1 commit
• src/content_type — 1 commit
• src/display — 1 commit
• src/image — 1 commit
• src/preview — 1 commit
• src/tree — 1 commit

• fix: Fix ctrl chars shown on CRLF in preview
• fix: fix false content matches in compressed files
• fix: fix handling of newlines in file names in preview title
• fix: fix some kitty keyboard combinations wrongly read
• change: Bump chacha20 from yanked 0.10.1 to 0.10.2 (#1218)
• change: Merge branch 'main' of github.com:Canop/broot
• change: Merge branch 'nerd-font-toml-yaml' of github.com:noahkawaguchi/broot into noahkawaguchi-nerd-font-toml-yaml
• change: Merge remote-tracking branch 'origin/main'
• change: Use e6b2 icon for nerd font TOML file types
• change: Use e8eb icon for nerd font YAML file types
• change: choose content search over diff in cas of pattern
• change: clarify gs/gf/h toggle usage
• change: remove bench
• change: remove zune as a direct dependency
• change: restore x86_65-linux download link
• change: suggest nerdfont font for icons instead of vscode
• change: version 1.60.2

Written by watchdog.canine.dev from the codebase's own history, inside the signed delivery this page is composed from.

Canop/broot was measured the same way every project in this corpus was: the same rubric, at a pinned commit, with the result published in full. Point a surveyor at a repository you know and see whether you agree with it.