Rust-Written Replacement To GNU Coreutils Progressing, Some Binaries Now Faster

[chocolate]

But it is. It is a waste of time when they could have spent their time on fixing GNU Coreutils. Instead, have they created yet another clone, made another claim of RUST being safer, and without providing actual evidence.

Evidence, as in mathematical proof for a given set of problems, is in the compiler. I'm not speaking for the Rust coreutils developers, but it looks like more and more people adopt Rust as a preventive measure because, language preferences aside, it is a sane step between an intrinsically unsafe language such as C with no additional infrastructure around it, and any language (including C) which relies on such infrastructure to achieve some level of confidence in the areas that Rust has already proven to excel in. For reference, look at what seL4 has had to do.

One could have spent the time to improve GNU Coreutils performance if there is an opportunity to do so. So instead of giving back to the GNU Coreutils, which people have been using for decades, are the GNU Coreutils instead used to make a show.

This is also beneficial to GNU as, by implementing some options, Michael Debertol noticed some incorrect behaviors (with sort and cat) or an uninitialized variable (with chmod).

Frankly, not giving back, but instead making it into some sort of cancel culture is pathetic.

Because the GNU testsuite is excellent, we now have a proper CI using it to run the tests.

How is this cancel culture? It seems to me this initiative has been respectful towards GNU and its historic significance. Way better than BSD people not acknowledging useful GNU options because "POSIX" or something (while probably hiding anti-GNU sentiments underneath). Wouldn't you agree? Maybe I missed something; in that case, I would be thankful if you could share a link to the developers of this coreutils initiative acting up.

[sdack]

what the hell does this have to do with cancel culture?

Then you better start learning what cancel culture is. I am not wasting my time teaching you. Look it up.

[Quackdoc]

Then you better start learning what cancel culture is. I am not wasting my time teaching you. Look it up.

I know exactly what it is and am myself against it, but where is the evidence of this claim?

[johncall]

also, what the hell are these ads? it keeps pushing my comment text filed off screen as i type. i disabled my adblock on this site. how could you?[/USER]

I enjoy Michael's content, thanks for disabling your ad blocker to support him as well! Might I also suggest purchasing one of his premium subscriptions that disables all ads, and renders his articles on one page? I definitely get my (about) $1 per week of value out of my subscription.

[sdack]

Evidence, as in mathematical proof for a given set of problems, is in the compiler.

So you imagine. It is however in itself is a piece of software and can have bugs despite all good intentions. My reference is specifically with GNU Coreutils. One can only claim software X to be safer than Y when it actually is. One can certainly use RUST to program nonsense, and one can use C to program safely. But to say GNU Coreutil was less safe requires proof. Just imagining it to be safer does not make it so.

The idea anything written in RUST would automatically be safer based on a language feature, all while the language itself is Turing-complete, is the typical high horse attitude that has been proven many times to lead to failure. It is not the protection from failure, but learning from failure that makes us better.

[secretlynotarobot]

So you imagine. It is however in itself is a piece of software and can have bugs despite all good intentions. My reference is specifically with GNU Coreutils. One can only claim software X to be safer than Y when it actually is. One can certainly use RUST to program nonsense, and one can use C to program safely. But to say GNU Coreutil was less safe requires proof. Just imagining it to be safer does not make it so.

The idea anything written in RUST would automatically be safer based on a language feature... It is not the protection from failure, but learning from failure that makes us better.

If I were your theoretical perfect programmer, I would simply write all of my code in the most elegant and fastest assembly ever seen. Unfortunately, no such person exists (and even if they did, you and I are not they), so I will stick to languages that enforce memory safety.

[skeevy420]

I think it is a great license. but I see no proof this has any relation to "cancel culture"

Oh that's easy. The zealots on both sides are fucking retarded.

[sdack]

I know exactly what it is and am myself against it, but where is the evidence of this claim?

Really? It is in the title of the article. Says right there, Replacemement.

[MadCatX]

So you imagine. It is however in itself is a piece of software and can have bugs despite all good intentions.

Mathematics and formal logic is not an imagination. Code in unsafe languages such a C is known to be prone to invalid memory access and concurrency bugs and 60 years of history of computer science provide ample evidence for that. For instance, the recent PwnKit exploit is exactly the kind of a bug that Rust would have prevented. Instead, we've had insta-root-access exploit on pretty much all Linux distros for about 14 years.

The idea anything written in RUST would automatically be safer based on a language feature, all while the language itself is Turing-complete, is the typical high horse attitude that has been proven many times to lead to failure. It is not the protection from failure, but learning from failure that makes us better.

And Rust is exactly the product of "learning from failure". By 2022 we know that preventing bugs at design level is way more effective than lengthy code reviews, complex static checks and emergency patching.

[BesiegedAce]

Really? It is in the title of the article. Says right there, Replacemement.

There is a certain irony to you whining about language choice and then beating the tired drum of "cancel culture". Anyone sane can understand what is meant by the title.