3 ms·
This is going to sound like a gripe and I swear it isn't, but is there a plan for a reasonably full suite of minimal userspace tools? I don't expect util-linux
by nonameiguess 10mo ago
This is going to sound like a gripe and I swear it isn't, but is there a plan for a reasonably full suite of minimal userspace tools? I don't expect util-linux itself in Rust, but something like:
- coreutils
- findutils
- libmagic and file
- tar and some compression libs
- grep, awk, sed
- the shell and all of its builtins
- something functionally equivalent to openssl or GnuTLS
- some ssh client and server
- curl
- a terminal-based editor
- man-db and texinfo
- some init system and bootloader
- pick a package manager, any package manager, and rewrite it in Rust
Barring all of that, maybe just busybox but written in Rust. That should give you roughly what you need for a non-graphical system. coreutils isn't nothing, but it's a pretty small part of the system, with much of it ending up implemented by the shell in most distros.
- steveklabnik 10mo agoI’m not aware of a unified plan to do this. uutils was started as a fun project, not some plan to build a Rust-only userland.
- adgjlsfhk1 10mo agoalso worth mentioning that the ones that are user facing are much lower priority than machine facing one. no one cares about CVEs in ed, but a CVE in cp would be really bad
- panick21_ 10mo agoThere are already many of these. fd, httpie, rg, and so on. There is of course RustTLS that already exists and is already very advanced. For package manager see for example AerynOS (or its new name that I can't remember). There are lots of rust editors, terminal and otherwise. And of course the complete Cosmic Desktop is written in Rust, so you don't have to go 'non-graphical' at all. So AerynOS, with uutils and Cosmic is very close I would say.
- steveklabnik 10mo agoMost (all?) of these projects aren’t aiming for drop-in compatibility.
- panick21_ 10mo agoI didn't realize this is what the person was wanting.
- steveklabnik 10mo agoI could be wrong!
- panick21_ 10mo agoWell, I pity the fool who tries to be bug compatible with Xorg.
- egorfine 10mo agosystemd sort of did this to certain parts and it's the worst thing that happened to Linux. Standardizing on Rust political rewrites of tar and libmagic is going to be an epic disaster and a decade of never-ending fun for Rust evangelicals.