Rewriting essential Linux packages in Rust

If the original thing is improved by being written in Rust as everyone proclaims, then this would be a good thing. However, I have doubts that the years upon years of updates fixing odd behavior, and then forgotten about the whys&hows of those updates that the same issues will not be introduced in the Rust version.

Re: Rewriting essential Linux packages in Rust

#6

Post by zamvisehamshwee » Sun, Mar 09, 2025, 6:52 PM UTC

1238127 wrote: post #2

[flagged]

[flagged]

Re: Rewriting essential Linux packages in Rust

#7

Post by kjrfghslkdjfl » Sun, Mar 09, 2025, 6:53 PM UTC

dylan604 wrote: post #5

1238127 wrote: post #2

[flagged]

If the original thing is improved by being written in Rust as everyone proclaims, then this would be a good thing. However, I have doubts that the years upon years of updates fixing odd behavior, and then forgotten about the whys&hows of those updates that the same issues will not be introduced in the Rust version.

[dead]

Re: Rewriting essential Linux packages in Rust

#8

Post by janice1999 » Sun, Mar 09, 2025, 7:01 PM UTC

shmerl wrote: post #3

Ripgrep should be included in all distros by default.

fd is also great and I install it everywhere.

https://github.com/sharkdp/fd

Re: Rewriting essential Linux packages in Rust

#9

Post by konart » Sun, Mar 09, 2025, 7:03 PM UTC

shmerl wrote: post #3

Ripgrep should be included in all distros by default.

And https://github.com/ast-grep/ast-grep maybe

Re: Rewriting essential Linux packages in Rust

#10

Post by janice1999 » Sun, Mar 09, 2025, 7:05 PM UTC

dylan604 wrote: post #5

1238127 wrote: post #2

[flagged]

If the original thing is improved by being written in Rust as everyone proclaims, then this would be a good thing. However, I have doubts that the years upon years of updates fixing odd behavior, and then forgotten about the whys&hows of those updates that the same issues will not be introduced in the Rust version.

> and then forgotten about the whys&hows of those updates that the same issues will not be introduced in the Rust version.

Ideally that's what test suites are for, although I'm sure some deviations/gaps will be caught by users. For uutils they are preserving all the edge cases, replicating the original behaviour.

There are benefits to rewrites (far less often in my experience), like doas replacing sudo in BSD distros and culling previous unused and insecure behaviour.