Feature request: Make counsel-locate command configurable

[Andre0991]

Currently locate is hardcoded, so it's not possible to change the command that counsel-locate uses.
This is inconvenient for OS X and Windows users, as the former might want to use mdfind, and the latter everything.

Reasons to use mdfind:

• It's Spotlight's backend, so using it feels very consistent and natural;
• locate won't work unless the user manually starts the database. mdfind works out of the box.
• its indexing is updated as the file system changes, ie changes are immediately detected and indexed.

I propose two things:

• Making the command configurable - in my case, I'd like to set it to mdfind
• Auto detecting the OS and setting the appropriate command - it's quite easy to implement and it makes sense: If a Windows user installed everything, of course he will want to use it (otherwise counsel-locate is useless for him); if I'm a OS X user, mdfind is much better and works out of the box.

If you agree with my second suggestion, I recommend using the -name parameter on mdfind - it searches only on filenames (and not content), which makes the search much faster.

[abo-abo]

I like the suggestion. But I don't have OSX or Windows, so I'll have to trust the contributor's code in those areas.

Feel free to open a PR. I suggest to deprecate counsel-locate-options in favor of a format-style string variable counsel-locate-command.

counsel-locate-options would need to be marked with make-obsolete-variable as an obsolete variable for 0.8.0. counsel-locate-function would still test for it, but also use counsel-locate-command. On releasing 0.8.0, counsel-locate-options will finally be removed.

[Andre0991]

Cool, I'll open a PR.

[Andre0991]

@abo-abo

How should I use counsel-locate-command and counsel-locate-options at the same time?

The issue is that counsel-locate-command (if I understand correctly what you want) already contains the full command (including parameters) - which I find a good idea. But counsel-locate-options don't play well with it - with the current code, it would add the -i parameter to mdfind, causing an error (as there's no such parameter for mdfind), for example.

Here's what I have:

(defun counsel--autodetect-locate-command ()
  "Try to set an appropriate command for `counsel-locate'
depending on the operating system."
  (cond
   ((eq system-type 'darwin)
    "mdfind -name")
   ;; TODO: find a Windows user that
   ;; can test Ivy and the Everything engine
   ;; ((eq system-type 'windows-nt)
   ;;  "es")
   (t "locate -i --regex")))

(defcustom counsel-locate-command (counsel--autodetect-locate-command)
  "Format string to use in `cousel-locate-function'.
   The default value is determined by `counsel--autodetect-locate-command'."
  :type 'stringp
  :group 'ivy)

This is the problematic part:

(defun counsel-locate-function (str)
  (if (< (length str) 3)
      (counsel-more-chars 3)
    (counsel--async-command
     ;; (format "locate %s '%s'"
     (format "%s %s '%s'"
             counsel-locate-command
             ;; (mapconcat #'identity counsel-locate-options " ")
             ""
             (counsel-unquote-regex-parens
              (ivy--regex str))))
    '("" "working...")))

Note that I commented the line that would add the parameters.

Here's counsel-locate-options (as it is now)

(defcustom counsel-locate-options (if (eq system-type 'darwin)
                                      '("-i")
                                    '("-i" "--regex"))
  "Command line options for `locate`."
  :group 'ivy
  :type  '(repeat string))

Should I just remove the darwin part? Also, having -i and --regex would be a bit misleading for the user as they are already used in counsel--autodetect-locate-command (so removing them would have no effect).

What do you suggest?

[abo-abo]

How should I use counsel-locate-command and counsel-locate-options at the same time?

Just remove all uses of counsel-locate-options and leave a warning that it's obsolete.
And make the code work in the same way, i.e. counsel-locate-command should be "locate -i" on darwin and "locate --regex" otherwise.

[Andre0991]

Right, I'll do that.

Should it use locate -i on darwin? I believe mdfind would be a better default for the reasons I mentioned in the first post, but it will get configurable anyway so it's not a big deal for me.

[abo-abo]

I think other users are used to locate -i. Is locate/mdfind installed by default, and is either objectively better?

[Andre0991]

mdfind is the backend of spotlight on Mac OS, so it's installed by default. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spotlight_(software)

locate is installed by default too.

Those are the killer advantages of mdfind for me:

• It is integrated with the filesystem so it gets updated automatically. You create a folder and it is already indexed. There's no need to update a database manually or set long intervals.
• It is very familiar for OS X users, because spotlight is widely used and it is its backend
• It works out of the box, there's no need to create the database

I found mdfind's results considerably better.
For example, I know I have a file that has git and org is its name, but I don't remember its location. I want to open it. Results:

Andres-MacBook-Air:~ andre0991$ mdfind -name git org
/Users/andre0991/Dropbox/ciencia_da_computacao/org/git.org
/Users/andre0991/Library/Caches/Metadata/Safari/History/https:%2F%2Fgithub.com%2Fsyl20bnr%2Fspacemacs%2Fissues%2F1218.webhistory
/Users/andre0991/Library/Caches/Metadata/Safari/History/https:%2F%2Fgithub.com%2Farduino-org%2FArduino%2Fissues%2F2.webhistory

Searching the same string with locate results in 59112 results, and the top ones are not what I want.

I actually stopped using find-files because I can just type the file or directory name using mdfind (with Ivy or Helm, of course) and get the right result.

I could go on and show more examples but it would be great if some OS X users say what they think about this proposal here.

[abo-abo]

Emacs allows defcustom to have easily select-able pre-configured values. I think it makes sense to have locate as the default one, but mdfind should be easy to customize to.

[Andre0991]

@abo-abo OK, I'll set locateas default on OS X.

I don't understand why

(counsel-unquote-regex-parens
 (ivy--regex str))

is used in the locate function. Can't it just use the string that the user entered?

Note: mdfind doesn't support regex.

[abo-abo]

Can't it just use the string that the user entered?

I think the issue there was that locate has a different syntax for regex groups.

[Andre0991]

Some old versions of locate don't support --regex. mdfind doesn't either. I'm not sure about es.

So for those cases (or if the user wants to change the default command to one without --regex) the code from my previous post shouldn't run. How do you suggest handling this?

[abo-abo]

Please have a look. If you wish, you can add a counsel-locate-cmd-mdfind that's similar to counsel-locate-cmd-noregex.

[Andre0991]

Thanks. I created a counsel-locate-cmd-mdfind for my config.

[abo-abo]

If you wish, open a PR to add it, so that it's easier for people on OSX to customize.
There's a 15 line limit for people without an Emacs copyright assignment though.

[Andre0991]

Ah, sure. I'll do it soon.

[hmelman]

I do know how to change it, but my vote is that counsel-locate-cmd on OS X should default to counsel-locate-cmd-mdfind