Introduction

This post explores the journey of building a terminal user interface (TUI) file manager in Rust. We'll examine Blaze Ultra, a practical CLI application that demonstrates key concepts in Rust development including terminal manipulation, event handling, and modern UI frameworks.

Why Rust for CLI Applications?

Rust has become increasingly popular for CLI tools due to several compelling advantages:

  • Performance: Near C-level performance with zero-cost abstractions
  • Safety: Memory safety without garbage collection prevents common bugs
  • Ergonomics: Modern tooling with Cargo makes distribution trivial
  • Cross-platform: Write once, compile anywhere with minimal platform-specific code
  • Rich Ecosystem: Mature crates like clap, ratatui, and tokio accelerate development

Popular examples include ripgrep, fd, bat, and exa - all demonstrating Rust's capability to create fast, reliable command-line tools.