How to output files and directory along with their icons with the ls command

Overview

Hello there, it's snow and i'm back with another completely impractical (but cool) tutorial;
I don't know for you but i have always wanted to see the output of the ls command show me the icons of the files along with their name, so after many hours of searching, i finally found my solution. I though that maybe someone else might need it so i wrote this post so that you won't spend the hours i spent reseaching on this.

Goals

The goal of this tutorial is to obtain this

starting from, this:

Also check this asciicast if you want to see what it looks like: https://asciinema.org/a/21Kt0cvPKnH3hp2YtVD6alhnm
This tutorial is going to require some tools:

• git
• make

Installing the needed tools(linux/macos)

On debian-based distros, run in your terminal:

$ sudo apt update
$ sudo apt install git make
#optional, it just a better terminal emulator in my opinion
$ sudo apt install alacritty

On rheel based distros:

$ sudo dnf install make git
#optional, it just a better terminal emulator in my opinion
$ sudo dnf install alacritty

On arch based distros:

$ sudo pacman -S git make 
#optional, it just a better terminal emulator in my opinion
$ sudo pacman -S alacritty

On mac

$ brew install git make

Time to rock

Now that we have all the needed dependencies, let's proceed to the next step: installing the icons:

First of all, clone the github repository

$ git clone https://github.com/sebastiencs/icons-in-terminal.git && cd icons-in-terminal

Then install the icons:

$ ./build.sh # builds the icons
$ ./install.sh #installs the icons

After the installation ends, check that all the icons have been downloaded by running:

$ ./print_icons.sh

here is the output i get in my terminal:

📓 📝 😎 tip:
Do not worry if all the icons are not being displayed correctly, just restart the shell

📓 📝 😎 tip:
refer to the troubleshoot section below if the problem persists after restarting the shell

Then let's make sure that the icons will be printed with the ls command:

Follow these steps:

$ git clone https://github.com/sebastiencs/ls-icons && cd ls-icons # clone the repo
$ ./bootstrap
$ export CFLAGS=-DNO_TRUE_COLOURS=1 # Execute this line _only_ if your terminal doesn't support true colours
$ export CC=clang CXX=clang++
$ ./configure --prefix=/opt/coreutils            #
$ make                                         #  these 3 command might take a bit of time to complete, so be a bit patient
$ sudo make install                              #
$ /opt/coreutils/bin/ls       # check if everything is fine

After all these commands finish to execute, you should hopefully get this output in your terminal:

Troubleshoot

If you do not get this output then it should be a problem with your terminal emulator or a command you executed in a bad way you may also need to reboot into your computer in order for the changes to take effect, try to execute the last 3 commands as root if your problem isn't included in the above ones.

Final words

If you want you can make /opt/coreutils/bin/ls as execute itself each time you type ls, just execute $ sudo cp /opt/coreutils/bin/ls /usr/bin/ls . also be sure to make a copy of the original ls binary in case you want to return to the good ol' ls .

📓 📝 😎 tip:
if you found any error or typo in this tutorial please open an issue or make a PR