zeitkatze

Zeitkatze is time cat -- literally

=(^.^)= =(ˇ.ˇ)= =(o.o)m =(*.*)= =(^.^)= =(ˇ.ˇ)= =(o.o)m =(*.*)= =(^.^)= =(ˇ.ˇ)= =(o.o)m =(*.*)=

1. About

What's the simplest stopwatch in a linux console? Well, just type time cat to start, and push ctrl-c to stop. Zeitkatze is the same thing, with just a little extra.

It continuously updates the total elapsed time display, you can hit ctrl-c once to display a split time, and if you quit (hitting ctrl-d, or ctrl-c twice in succession, or q), zeitkatze prints the total time and exits. You can measure a new split time (or "lap time") by pressing ctrl-c once or by hitting Enter.

2. Installation

2.1 For Arch-based distros

If you run an Arch-based distro (Arch, Manjaro, Artix, etc.), you can install it from the AUR, e.g. via the yay package wrapper:

yay -S zeitkatze

2.2 Manual installation

2.2.1 Installation

Make sure you're in the root directory (same level as the Makefile). Then you can install it directly with one command. It will compile the project for you and install it at $PREFIX/bin, where PREFIX is defined in the Makefile -- typically /usr. Execute sudo make install to install it if you've cloned the repo and you're at the root level. Alternatively, open up and terminal and paste the following to install it:

cd `mktemp -d`
wget https://github.com/leonmavr/zeitkatze/archive/refs/heads/master.zip
unzip master.zip
cd zeitkatze-master
sudo make install

2.2.2 Uninstallation

To uninstall it manually you can execute the following from any terminal:

sudo rm `which zeitkatze`

Or from the root level of the repository:

sudo make uninstall

3. Development

To execute any of the following steps, it's assumed that you're in the root directory (same directory as the Makefile).

To compile:

make

To clean:

make clean

You can use it by simply running the executable. It accepts certain command line options described in section 4 -- Usage.

./zeitkatze

Don't forget that the naming coding coding conventions follow the C++ Google standard (example) and the spacing and indentation convention the clang format. You can execute the script scripts/clang_format.sh to format all source files.

4. Usage

Short specifier	Long specifier	Argument type	Default	Description
-n	--no-color	None	Off	Disables colors when formatting the times on the terminal
-p	--precision	integer	2	How many decimal places to show when measuring time
-o	--one-line	None	Off	Whether or not to print the output in one line - in this case only prints lap times
-r	--reset-emotes	None	Off	If true, re-writes (and overwrites )the default cat emotes to file ~/.config/zeitkatze/cats.txt
-h	--help	None	Off	Print usage instructions and exit

Other features/tips:

• It also supports configuration via the environment variable ZEITKATZE_COLOR. Note that the option -n or --no-color overrides this variable. If ZEITKATZE_COLOR is set to 0 (e.g. by adding ZEITKATZE_COLOR=0 in your rc), then colors are disabled.
• You can define custom cat emotes at ~/.config/zeitkatze/cats.txt. This file is created by default and can be overwritten. For a nicer output, make sure that all cats take the same number of characters (you can pad with spaces if necessary).
• If you mess up your config file that contains the cat emotes (~/.config/zeitkatze/cats.txt), you can reset it by calling the method ResetEmotes() on your Zeitkatze instance.

5. Future ideas

• Measure seconds with custom precision
• Read cat emoticons from file
• Write times to file in a compact format
• Add a command line specifier that calls ResetMethod() on Zeitkatze
• Option for one-line output
• Animated cats with multithreading?
• Unicode support
• Fancier output with ncurses
• Unit test it by sending signals/keystrokes to the app

6. Issues

• None at the moment

7. Bugs

• After running zeitkatze in a terminal, it changes its properties. A side-effect of this is that if you try to enter a user password in same terminal, it will not work: sudo: no password was provided sudo: a password is required