Housekeeping

A few commands keep a long-lived zflash setup tidy and fast.

A maintenance checklist

When	Do
You edited the spec	Nothing. The next shell rebuilds.
You edited one of your own rc files	Nothing. It's recompiled on the next start.
You upgraded a tool used by zflash eval (starship, zoxide, fzf…)	zflash build
You installed a tool referenced by a condition in the spec	zflash build
You installed software that adds completion files (brew install …)	Nothing (picked up within 24 h), or zflash reset for immediate effect
You removed plugins from the spec	zflash clean
Every so often	zflash update, then check zflash bench
Every so often	Upgrade zflash: git -C "$ZFLASH_SRC" pull (details)
Something seems off	zflash reset

zflash build

Regenerate the init from the spec. Use it after upgrading tools used with zflash eval, or whenever you want changes in the current shell (follow it with exec zsh).

zflash list

Show what the current init loads, by stage. Paths inside $ZFLASH_HOME/repos are shown relative to it; eval snippets are shown as $ <command>.

fpath  zsh-users/zsh-completions/src
fpath  /opt/homebrew/share/zsh/site-functions
sync   ~/.zsh/exports
sync   $ starship init zsh --print-full-init | grep -v "^PROMPT2="
defer  Aloxaf/fzf-tab/fzf-tab.plugin.zsh
defer  ~/.zsh/aliases

zflash clean

Remove repositories that are no longer referenced by the spec:

zflash clean          # asks for confirmation
zflash clean --yes    # no prompt

It compares $ZFLASH_HOME/repos with the repositories in the last build. Make sure the build is current (open a new shell or run zflash build) first.

zflash reset

Delete the init, its compiled form, the manifest and all completion dumps, then build from scratch. This is the "turn it off and on again" of zflash. It's safe: plugins aren't re-cloned and your files aren't touched.

Use it when completions are stale or missing, after big changes, or when something behaves unexpectedly.

zflash bench

Time interactive startup:

zflash bench          # 10 runs
zflash bench 50

zsh -i startup, 10 runs: min 14 ms · median 15 ms · max 19 ms

Measure before and after adding plugins to see what each costs. For more precise numbers, use hyperfine: hyperfine -N 'zsh -i -c exit'.

Disk usage

du -sh ~/.local/share/zflash/repos/*/*

oh-my-zsh is by far the largest clone. All clones are shallow (--depth=1).