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The thing is that coreutils is used everywhere - servers, desktops, and embedded devices, including 30-40 years old machines. You want to update coreutils on ol
by dig1 3y ago
The thing is that coreutils is used everywhere - servers, desktops, and embedded devices, including 30-40 years old machines. You want to update coreutils on old SPARC or some even older mainframe? Every byte counts.
So, saving as many bytes as possible is still very relevant.
- kstrauser 3y agoHow often are we updating coreutils on 40 year old machines today? Are there more than a couple of hobby machines that old and still regularly updated with new packages?
- dig1 3y agoYou'd be surprised how many banks, electrical grids, oil rigs, and large ships run on old hardware. If ain't broken, you don't replace it. But keeping the system up-to-date is always a benefit.
- mschuster91 3y ago> You'd be surprised how many banks, electrical grids, oil rigs, and large ships run on old hardware. If ain't broken, you don't replace it. That attitude has got to die in an age of everything being exploited by bad actors. Anything that has any form of networking should have regular replacement at least of the control plane components budgeted in from the start.
- lbhdc 3y agoOn the otherhand, I think you could argue that it is something to strive for in more systems. The longer our devices can last the less ewaste we generate. It may not be the easiest to secure, but it isn't impossible.
- elzbardico 3y agoMost of those really old devices are usually air-gaped from the internet for incidental reasons. Either they run on closed networks or have no networking at all. You're not going to find a 30 years old machine that controls the pumps of nuclear reactor on the internet.
- spoiler 3y agoBut if these machines are so isolated, and given they've been running with the "if it ain't broken" mindset: why, and more importantly how do they even get updated? If they aren't being updated, why discuss constraints on updating them?
- elzbardico 3y agoI bet they don't get updated, ever.
- mschuster91 3y ago> You're not going to find a 30 years old machine that controls the pumps of nuclear reactor on the internet. Stuxnet would like to have a word with you. Airgap isn't enough to prevent malware from spreading.
- kstrauser 3y agoI don't buy into that here. If it's that mission critical and hard to replace, I wouldn't touch something as essential as coreutils without a gun to my head. In the very best case, the new version would work exactly like the old one so that the 40-year-old shell scripts holding the thing together would continue working as before.
- stonogo 3y agoCoreutils might be everywhere, but uutils will only be wherever LLVM targets, because Rust isn't as portable as C. It's much easier to declare yourself cross-platform when you're not actually competing with real cross-platform software (like coreutils).