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It seems like the first step should be packaging this up as a metapackage or something for interested parties and having at least a full unstable release cycle
by jerf 2y ago
It seems like the first step should be packaging this up as a metapackage or something for interested parties and having at least a full unstable release cycle where that's optional and tested before replacing such utilities for what is oestensibly an end-user distribution for less-technical people who will not be able to fix things going wrong deep in the heart of shell scripts.
I'm all for Rusting more-or-less all the things, but Rust isn't actually magic or anything. Things aren't automatically better just because Rust. And as someone who keeps at least modest track of CVEs and such, these utilities aren't exactly throwing CVEs out left right front and center. I don't like the amount of C in the world but being run billions of times a day in every conceivable environment is itself a really, really good test. We well know from history, still not always perfect, but honestly these aren't the things that need a priority Rusting; it's the code that doesn't fit that description that really needs it.
- ericjmorey 2y agosomething like this?: https://github.com/jnsgruk/oxidizr https://github.com/jnsgruk/oxidizr
- superkuh 2y agoI appreciate your comment and the humor in the situation since the original topic does everything the post you're glibly replying to requests. And so you just had to re-link it. But it's still rolling-only code. And having to change it for every ubuntu release (even if per-release everything is targeted to the static version of rustc in Ubuntu) is silly since cargo editions won't save you. And since anyone actually compiling rust programs will have had to update their rustc constantly they'll have to do some containerization or something to compile the $version-written tool for $ubuntu-release-number.
- HumanOstrich 2y agoThat's a lot of text to say "rewrite everything else in Rust, just not this".
- jerf 2y agoNo, it's a lot of text to say "before replacing so many fundamental packages in an end-user distro at least beta test it". By all means, rewrite it in Rust, but don't go slamming it in to Ubuntu. Debian unstable. Gentoo. Something other than what I put on my boomer-generation, stereotypical "knows nothing about computers" father-in-law's laptop so I don't have to support him every week.
- HumanOstrich 2y ago> By all means, rewrite it in Rust No
- sophacles 2y agoGood thing the actual article is introducing a tool that makes it easy for people to switch between the rust core-utils and the gnu ones. Almost as if it enables a wide-spread, opt-in beta...