GO-VIGATOR

A File Explorer for Windows with fast searching capabilities and essential functionalities

How to Install

To Install this project run

Step 1

Clone the project locally in your system

    git clone github.com/pksingh21/go-vigator

Step 2

Create a Virtual Environment Python script

    python -v venv .env

Step 3

Install the dependencies for the Python files which can be found in the filesystem search folder in the repo ( which is an independent Golang package in itself. )

    pip install -r requirement.txt

Step 4

Open up the Project or you could run your Wails dev server

    open govigator.exe

Step 5

Run the Python script to get the logs for file system changes to update the cache which can be found in your C:\Users{UserName}

    python filesystemWatcher.py

ROADMAP of Working

1. Native APIs are written in Go and GUI in React using Wails.
2. APIs written use Golang system independent APIs like fetching file information inside directories while their icons are fetched using native windows apis.
3. We are also keeping track of their history in the backend using a simple Linked List approach called on each update path request.
4. In order to Implement the fast searching we are caching all the paths in the system in treenew1.bin.gz, so for the first search it will take time about 1-2 minutes to build the cache.
5. To update the cache afterwards we have written a Python script that will log the updates in the file system in realTime and whenever you make a search request we read these logs and update the cache.
6. Over the cache built we have applied a fuzzy search algorithm.

BenchMark

for this array of fileNames, the time taken to search from the array of path is

searchFiles := []string{"531-rebuilds-with-cache.zip",
		"go.mod.tmpl",
		"__init__.pyc",
		"C_IS2022.DLL",
		"amd64_microsoft-windows-s..subsystem.resources_31bf3856ad364e35_10.0.22621.1_en-gb_4dd2e2d1170109f9.manifest",
		"IMG_0810.HEIC",
		"jar_obj.png",
		"gcard_frame_pathfinder_season02_epic_01(01).rpak",
		"4eb0f8cc4755f8b28a52d6cc22a52aeb0a4948ed-12",
		"Rangoon"}

Metrics

File Number	Search Time
0th file	2.7603966s
1st file	2.1872565s
2nd file	2.4812174s
3rd file	2.5870516s
4th file	3.7700409s
5th file	2.1797018s
6th file	2.2011883s
7th file	2.8188027s
8th file	2.7556473s
9th file	1.9807644s

SystemState

With TreeBin size of 5900 KB With a Storage Size of around 800GB

FutureWork

1. Implement the Go routine Watch Properly so that it is not invoked more than once. (currently called for every search query)
2. Search in an array can be done parallelly currently done linearly
3. Some GUI fixes like on search sometimes file won't open