From C to Rust? The Real Story Behind GNU Coreutils

Video Description

00:00 Intro 10:49 Rust: Myth and Reality – What It Really Means to Rewrite the Coreutils 10:54 1. There’s No Real Problem to Solve 12:04 2. POSIX Compatibility Is Sacred 12:44 3. Maintenance Cost Increases, Not Decreases 13:29 4. Rust Adds Abstraction Where Transparency Is Needed 14:24 5. Performance Isn’t the Point 15:09 Conclusion Let’s dive into the history of Coreutils, and end with a few honest reflections. # References and Sources ## GNU Project and Coreutils **"The GNU Manifesto" (1985)** - Author: Richard Stallman - Link: https://www.gnu.org/gnu/manifesto.html Original motivation for creating GNU **GNU Coreutils Documentation** - Maintainers: Jim Meyering, Pádraig Brady, Paul Eggert - Link: https://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/ Official documentation and project history **"Gnulib: The GNU Portability Library" (2007)** - Author: Bruno Haible Details on POSIX portability ## POSIX Standard **IEEE Std 1003.1-2017 (POSIX.1-2017)** - Link: https://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9699919799/ Standard that governs coreutils behavior **"The Single UNIX Specification"** - The Open Group Cross-platform compatibility ## Security and CVE **National Vulnerability Database (NVD)** - Link: https://nvd.nist.gov/ - Search: "GNU coreutils CVE" - Specific examples: - CVE-2016-2781 (chroot) - CVE-2017-18018 (sort) - CVE-2019-1010024 (basename) Demonstrates that bugs exist but are rare and quickly corrected ## Memory Safety and Rust **"Rust: A Language for Safe Systems Programming" (2015)** - Authors: Aaron Turon, Nicholas D. Matsakis Original motivations for Rust **"Is Rust Used Safely by Software Developers?" (2020)** - Authors: Ana Nora Evans et al. - Published in: ICSE 2020 Empirical analysis of Rust usage **"Fearless Concurrency: Memory Safety without Garbage Collection" (2015)** - Authors: Aaron Turon et al. Rust is designed for concurrency, not simple programs ## Temporal Robustness and Maintainability **"Technical Debt: From Metaphor to Theory and Practice" (2012)** - Authors: Carolyn Seaman, Yuepu Guo Maintenance costs over time **"The Long-Term Maintenance of Software Systems" (2016)** - Author: Diomidis Spinellis Temporal robustness of legacy systems **"Software Aging" (1995)** - Author: David Lorge Parnas - Published in: ICSE 1995 Why some software ages well and others don't ## Benchmark and Performance **"Performance Analysis of Linux Utilities" (various)** - uutils benchmark repository - Link: https://github.com/uutils/coreutils/tree/main/tests/bench Direct comparisons GNU vs uutils **"Understanding I/O Performance Bottlenecks" (2019)** - Authors: Various (Linux kernel documentation) Demonstrates that I/O is the bottleneck, not the language ## POSIX Compatibility **"POSIX Compliance Testing" (2018)** - The Open Group Requirements for POSIX compliance **uutils POSIX compliance tracking** - Link: https://github.com/uutils/coreutils/issues/1614 Documents existing differences --- **GNU and Coreutils:** https://www.gnu.org/gnu/manifesto.html https://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/ **POSIX Standard:** https://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9699919799/ **Security Database:** https://nvd.nist.gov/ **Rust Project:** https://github.com/uutils/coreutils **Benchmark Repository:** https://github.com/uutils/coreutils/tree/main/tests/bench **POSIX Compliance Tracking:** https://github.com/uutils/coreutils/issues/1614