Introduction

The ratcrate-cli Project

ratcrate is a highly efficient command-line interface (CLI) application written in Rust designed to be the primary tool for discovering, searching, and managing packages within the rapidly growing Ratatui (Terminal User Interface) ecosystem.

The project’s goal is to provide developers with instant, terminal-native access to up-to-date crate information, bypassing the need to browse websites.

Key Features

• Offline Access: Intelligent caching ensures that data is only downloaded when stale (older than 1 day) or when a manual refresh is requested.
• Fuzzy Search: Filter crates by name or description using the -q, --query argument.
• Interactive Selection: Integrates seamlessly with the external fzf utility for interactive, searchable selection (-f).
• Statistical Breakdown: Provides a clear summary of total, core, and community crates (-t).
• Configurable Display: Supports both a default colorful list view and an optional structured table view.

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Getting Started and Usage

Prerequisites

To build and run ratcrate, you must have the following installed:

1. Rust Toolchain: Install Rust and Cargo via rustup.
2. fzf (Optional): The fuzzy finder utility is required to use the interactive selection mode (-f). Install it via your operating system’s package manager (e.g., sudo apt install fzf or brew install fzf).

Building and Running

Clone the repository (or ensure the files are in one directory) and use Cargo to build and run the application.

```bash # Build and run the executable cargo run –release

Run with a standard query

cargo run – -q “widgets”

Flag	Long	Type	Description
none	none	none	Show top 10 crates
-q	--query	String	Search term to filter crates by name or description.
-t	--total	none	Show total count incld. Core vs. Community
-l	--limit	usize	Maximum number of results to display (default: 10).
-r	--refresh	none	Force re-download of remote data, bypassing the cache check.
-c	--cache-info	none	Display the cache directory and file path
-f	--fzf	none	Use fzf for interactive selection of a crate.
none	--table	none	Use the table view (requires compiling with the table feature).