Rust Coreutils 0.4 passes 544 GNU tests and cuts failures by 12, advancing toward full GNU compatibility.

The Rust Coreutils project, which aims to provide a full, modern Rust implementation of the GNU Core Utilities — the essential command-line tools found on every Linux and Unix-like operating system — has announced the release of version 0.4.

Notably, the project’s growing maturity has already led to real-world adoption in some Linux distros, such as Ubuntu 25.10 “Questing Quokka” and AerynOS, both of which now utilize Rust Coreutils for select system utilities.

Version 0.4 brings this release a step closer to achieving full GNU Coreutils compatibility. According to devs, the latest test results show 544 passing tests, up from 532 in the previous 0.3 release — an increase that raises total compatibility to 85.8%, while failures dropped from 68 to 56.

  • trevor (he/they)@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
    241·
    12 days ago

    The detractors of this project portray it like it’s a far-off pipe dream to be a drop-in replacement for GNUtils. Meanwhile, it’s still a relatively young project that already has 85% compatibility. I think we can do it. Lol.

      • qweertz@programming.dev
        121·
        12 days ago

        This is my take as well. I’m extremely disappointed they only went with a temporarily open license instead of a proper one, but using MIT is unfortunately to be expected from the Rust ecosystem for whatever reason…

          • qweertz@programming.dev
            1·
            9 days ago

            MIT is an extremely weak license when it comes to defending free/libre rights; e.g. it allows proprietary forks. i.e. companies stealing the code, making their own bullshit corpo product and not even releasing the source code back

            • morto@piefed.socialEnglish
              1·
              9 days ago

              I understand and share the dislike, but the openly released version will remain free, and no one can change it, so don’t you think temporarily open is a bit misleading?

        • qweertz@programming.dev
          1·
          9 days ago

          Last I checked Ubuntu was not an unstable mess of a rolling release, but a distro people rely on for stability.

          Their normal non-LTS versions are still considered production ready and acting that rash has only solidified my negative opinion of them more…

          • trevor (he/they)@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
            11·
            9 days ago

            If you’re expecting stability for any Ubuntu release, that went out the window when Canonical started forcing Snaps.

            But non-LTS Ubuntu releases have always been a testing ground for less-than-stable changes. uutils is just one of them, and the only way to make them stable is to see how they’re being used in the wild.

    • bluGill@fedia.io
      11·
      12 days ago

      I would expect the last 10% to take 90% of the work though. There are a lot of rough edges that just work weird. There is also a question of what is useful to get from that last 10%, or what should be done different despite being incompatible. (BSD utils are also an option to be compatible with instead)