htop-win-rust

A minimal htop clone for Windows built with Rust and ratatui, featuring sparkline history charts.

Features

• Real-time Monitoring — CPU and memory usage with visual gauges
• Sparkline History — Visual history charts for CPU/memory trends
• Process Management — View, search, sort, and kill processes
• Interactive TUI — Built with ratatui for responsive terminal UI
• Process Details — View detailed process information

Installation

cd htop\win\rust
cargo build --release

# Binary location
.\target\release\htop-win-rust.exe

Prerequisites

• Rust (MSVC toolchain): https://rustup.rs/
• Windows Terminal or PowerShell (recommended)

Usage

# Run directly
cargo run --release

# Or run the built binary
.\target\release\htop-win-rust.exe

Note: If rebuilding, quit the running TUI first with q to avoid file lock errors.

Keyboard Shortcuts

Navigation

Key	Action
↑/↓	Select previous/next process
PgUp/PgDn	Page up/down
Home/End	Jump to first/last

Sorting

Key	Action
s	Cycle sort column (CPU → MEM → PID → Name)
r	Reverse sort order

Search/Filter

Key	Action
/	Enter search mode
Enter	Apply filter
Esc	Clear filter
Backspace	Delete character

Refresh Control

Key	Action
p	Pause/resume refresh
F5	Force refresh
-	Slow down (max 5000ms)
+/=	Speed up (min 200ms)

Process Actions

Key	Action
k	Kill selected process
i	Show/hide process details

General

Key	Action
q	Quit
Esc	Close popup/cancel input

Display

Header Panel

• CPU Gauge — Visual percentage bar with usage
• Memory Gauge — Visual percentage bar with usage
• Sparkline Charts — CPU and memory history

Process Table

Column	Description
PID	Process ID
NAME	Process name
CPU%	CPU usage percentage
MEM(MiB)	Memory usage in MiB

Process Details

• Name and status
• CPU% and memory
• Executable path
• Command line arguments

Process Kill on Windows

Uses Windows taskkill command:

1. First attempts graceful termination
2. Falls back to /F (force) if needed

Note: Administrator privileges may be required for some processes.

Dependencies

• ratatui — Terminal UI framework
• crossterm — Cross-platform terminal manipulation
• sysinfo — System information
• htop_shared — Shared library for common functions

Known Limitations

• Some system processes cannot be terminated (permission denied)
• Certain processes may not report full information
• CPU% stabilizes after 1-2 refresh cycles

Testing

cargo test

Comparison with Go Implementation

Feature	Rust	Go
TUI Framework	ratatui	tview
Sparkline history	✅	❌
Shared library	✅	❌
System info	sysinfo	gopsutil

License

MIT OR Apache-2.0