Ripgrep should be included in all distros by default.
It’s a great tool, but it’s not a posix compliant grep.
Rewriting essential Linux packages in Rust
61–70 of 175 posts
Re: Rewriting essential Linux packages in Rust
#62Rewriting GPL software under the MIT license is a terrible thing to do. The GPL is meant to protect and preserve what should be basic human rights. So-called "permissive" licenses are meant to provide big tech with free labour.
Thanks for sharing this thought, it hadn't occured to me that this could be an issue. Would the choice of AGPL or MPL for a licence have satisfied your concerns?
Re: Rewriting essential Linux packages in Rust
#63Earlier quoted context omitted.
It’s a great tool, but it’s not a posix compliant grep.
I think it's more about having a stable interface. If it's not stable - you can't use it as a base tool long term. But if it's stable, what difference does it make if it's POSIX compliant or not?
So changing to the new thing invalidates all that existing value.
That’s not argument to never do anything new, but it’s an argument why for your UNIX-like OS should ship the standard boring thing instead of the shiny new thing in the base install.
Re: Rewriting essential Linux packages in Rust
#64Rewriting GPL software under the MIT license is a terrible thing to do. The GPL is meant to protect and preserve what should be basic human rights. So-called "permissive" licenses are meant to provide big tech with free labour.
Re: Rewriting essential Linux packages in Rust
#65> " There are between 200 and 300 dependencies in the uutils project. He said that he understood there is always a supply-chain-attack risk, "but that's a risk we are willing to take". There is more and more tooling around to help mitigate the risk, he said. left-pad II, coming soon to a Linux distro near you
Could anyone expand on this? I could imagine tools... better static analysis, maybe? being able to help. But I'd really want to see details. Both to see if it really helps, and because if there is tooling to help then I want to know so I can adopt it!
Re: Rewriting essential Linux packages in Rust
#66Rewriting GPL software under the MIT license is a terrible thing to do. The GPL is meant to protect and preserve what should be basic human rights. So-called "permissive" licenses are meant to provide big tech with free labour.
Re: Rewriting essential Linux packages in Rust
#67Earlier quoted context omitted.
It would depend on what the end goal of the rewritten project is. If they pursue widespread adoption GPL licenses can definitely hinder it in many cases.
AGPL? I can understand. Pure GPL 2 or even GPL 3? Never heard of that.
Even people who nominally agree with the concept of Free Software might not want to be forced to use GPL. The freedom to choose how to license one's work is also an important freedom, after all. GPL can be confusing, so you can't fault anyone from not wanting to use it even if they agree with the spirit of the license.
(For the record, I use GPL on some of my projects. I don't hate it, but I also like to use MIT on some projects, too.)
Re: Rewriting essential Linux packages in Rust
#68Rewriting GPL software under the MIT license is a terrible thing to do. The GPL is meant to protect and preserve what should be basic human rights. So-called "permissive" licenses are meant to provide big tech with free labour.
Thanks for sharing this thought, it hadn't occured to me that this could be an issue. Would the choice of AGPL or MPL for a licence have satisfied your concerns?
Re: Rewriting essential Linux packages in Rust
#69Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Is Rust (llvm?) supported on all platforms Linux targets? AFAIK, no. Linux chooses to support platforms from which we haven't seen new releases in decades, like DEC Alpha. Although in recent years, Linux has dumped support for many older platforms including IA-64. But my guess is GNU coreutils also doesn't support all Linux targets. I mean this in two ways -- 1) AFAIK coreutils does not expressly support each and e…
I can't find an official list of supported targets, but https://github.com/coreutils/coreutils/blob/master/README-in... contains notes on compiling for IRIX, HPUX, AIX, and OSF/1 . So no, I would bet that it very much does run anywhere Linux runs, and a lot of places it doesn't.
Again, how well tested do you imagine the OSF/1 target is? Do you imagine each merge pops off a CI test for that platform? My guess is -- it's been a long time since anyone connected with the GNU coreutils project built for that platform.
See the reply from estebank to me, below:
> Platform support goes beyond "does a compiler happen to produce a binary".
Re: Rewriting essential Linux packages in Rust
#70Earlier quoted context omitted.
Perhaps, but MIT licensed code is Free like Air and Sunshine.
...and can be closed anytime, if the author wants to. Which will happen with these tools, anyway.