Rewriting the GNU Coreutils in Rust

Re:Rewriting the GNU Coreutils in Rust by bravetraveler on Friday June 18, 2021 @09:27AM (#27550038)

I'll start by saying... I'm not a developer by any serious sense anymore. I did C over a decade ago and realized it was just not for me

With that out it the way... This rust infatuation seems like those people using one click tools to interpolate videos with "AI"

The end result is objectively worse and it's done because of subjective opinion: (gleefully) these artifacts are so SMOOTH!

Moving coreutils to rust is similar. The unit test coverage is low, and the problems they're seeing don't inspire confidence

Predictability in the tools is being traded for memory safety. I'd worry about using these behind any scripts, an extra \n from an obscure pipe driven bug could mean portability disaster

Edit: For example, these quirks https://www.pixelbeat.org/docs/coreutils-gotchas.html

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Rewriting the GNU Coreutils in Rust by eric__cartman on Friday June 18, 2021 @10:18AM (#27550570)

I agree. When talking about tools that millions have been using and depending on for decades, "If it ain't broke don't fix it"

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Rewriting the GNU Coreutils in Rust by bravetraveler on Friday June 18, 2021 @03:48PM (#27554185)

Precisely

Even with all of the talent in the world and infinite time to plan, I still feel confident saying that perfect compatibility wouldn't exist

There's simply so much scope, and different edge cases that may be depended on... somewhere

Cost/benefit doesn't make sense

Edit: Write new tools in whatever language, but coreutils is like the _cornerstone_

[ Parent | on HN ]