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Sylvestre Ledru
sylvestre.ledru.info · Personal blog · on HN since 2011
Sylvestre Ledru, a Debian developer, writes about the Rust coreutils rewrite and rebuilding the Debian archive with Clang.
What HN saysHN links it for the Rust coreutils project in Debian, including FOSDEM slides explaining the motivation and benchmarks showing some utilities already faster than GNU.
15HN people shared it
4linked it in comments
14stories submitted
816story points
11 months agolast shared
2011people per year2026
Most-shared posts
- 1Debian Running on Rust Coreutils4 people · 498 points · first shared 2021 · 330 comments on HN
- 2A Simple Programing Language4 people · 2 points · first shared 2023 · discussion on HN
- 3An update on rust/coreutils2 people · 188 points · first shared 2022 · 98 comments on HN
- 4Sun-java6 packages removed soon from Debian/Ubuntu (and all other linux distros)1 people · 99 points · first shared 2011 · 57 comments on HN
- 5Debian rebuild with Clang 10 and some patches1 people · 20 points · first shared 2022 · 2 comments on HN
- 6Rebuild of the Debian archive with clang1 people · 3 points · first shared 2014 · discussion on HN
- 7Rebuild of Debian using clang 3.21 people · 2 points · first shared 2013 · discussion on HN
- 8Who is in control of LLVM/Clang?1 people · 2 points · first shared 2012 · discussion on HN
- 9Rebuild of Debian using Clang 3.9, 4.0 and 5.01 people · 1 points · first shared 2017 · discussion on HN
- 10Rebuild of the Debian archive with clang1 people · 1 points · first shared 2012 · discussion on HN
What HN people wrote when they linked it
GhettoComputers · 2021-12-14
>The GNU coreutils are still the very best you can get.
I don't understand this statement then, have you heard of this https://github.com/BurntSushi/ripgrep/blob/master/GUIDE.md
It sounds like you want bash POSIX support and it to be default before you would use them. The error nobody else replicated, and its stable enough to be included in debian. https://sylvestre.ledru.info/blog/2021/03/09/debian-running-on-rust-co…
Smaug123 · 2023-02-13
The slides are linked, at https://sylvestre.ledru.info/presentations/coreutils-fosdem-2023/#69 (for example), if you don't want to watch a video which discusses why they're doing it.
steveklabnik · 2021-12-06
One fun recent development in 2021: https://sylvestre.ledru.info/blog/2021/03/09/debian-running-on-rust-co…
> tldr: Rust/coreutils ( https://github.com/uutils/coreutils/ ) is now available in Debian, good enough to boot a Debian with GNOME, install the top 1000 packages, build Firefox, the Linux Kernel and LLVM/Clang.
fsiefken · 2023-03-02
Some utils are faster already, and they are working on cp and mv progress bars.
From the fosdem 2023 presentation:
https://sylvestre.ledru.info/presentations/coreutils-fosdem-2023/#99
==
Example #1:
$ hyperfine -r 10 \
"target/release/coreutils sort -R shakespeare.txt > shakespeare.txt.rand; \
target/release/coreutils sort shakespeare.txt.rand > /dev/null" \
"sort -R shakespeare.txt > shakespeare.txt.rand; \
sort shakespeare.txt > /dev/null"
é
[...]
Summary
'target/release/coreutils sort -R shakespeare.txt > shakespeare.txt.rand; target/release/coreutils sort shakespeare.txt.rand > /dev/null' ran
4.63 ± 0.19 times faster than 'sort -R shakespeare.txt > shakespeare.txt.rand; sort shakespeare.txt > /dev/null'
To be fair, we can be slower too
Example #3:
$ hyperfine "seq 18446744073708551615 18446744073709551615 | factor" \
"./target/release/coreutils seq 18446744073708551615 18446744073709551615| ./target/release/coreutils factor"
[...]
'seq 18446744073708551615 18446744073709551615 | factor' ran
5.08 ± 0.01 times faster than './target/release/coreutils seq 18446744073708551615 18446
===
Redox-OS is rewriting the BSD coreutils in Rust for their own OS.
https://github.com/redox-os/coreutils
I wonder what the most efficient and usable alternative operating system tradeoff choice tradeoff would be, perhaps mesalock (a linux with userspace tools compiled with rust)
syllable, haiku, redox, menuet64/kolibri, serenity, icaros desktop, postmarketos,…