plan9port VS fsv

Acme is genuinely worth trying, you can run it on Linux/Mac without a VM [1]. I'm pretty sure Russ Cox [2] and Rob Pike use it as their daily driver which is insane because it doesn't even have syntax highlighting. I used it for years when I was in school as an exercise in masochism, but I learned a lot about Unix, and the mouse-driven workflow actually grew on me.

[1]: https://9fans.github.io/plan9port/

[2] https://9fans.github.io/plan9port/

If you find it too complicated and closely tied to Go internals, you can also check out Plan 9 from User Space's version, which is itself based on libthread from Plan 9 starting from 3rd edition, which is itself based on Alef's implementation of channels (Alef is Go's grandfather).

I tried plan9port's mk for a moment out of curiosity. I quickly ran into an annoying usability problem: it compares file mtimes with second accuracy.

https://github.com/9fans/plan9port/blob/cc4571fec67407652b03...

With sub-second build times for individual targets, this causes mk to needlessly recompile files because the target may have the same mtime as the prerequisites.

There's a modern clone of it now: https://fsv.sourceforge.net/

fsv is a file system visualizer for comprehensive exploration and analysis. Utilizes a 3D layout, with both MapV and TreeV views, to facilitate unique perspectives on file hierarchy. For viewing permissions, phein4242 says, "It doesnt get any better than FSN/FSV."

Modern-ish version you can run on Linux: https://github.com/mcuelenaere/fsv

For a modern take on it: https://fsv.sourceforge.net/

With the upgrades to WSL in Windows 11 you can run fsv[1] with minimal hassle and get the true UNIX experience[2].

1: http://fsv.sourceforge.net/

Fun fact: this was a real application for IRIX, and there is an open-source clone of it.

There is fsv

fsn was proprietary SGI software for Irix. But a free clone exists : http://fsv.sourceforge.net/