I’m not a rust programmer, can anyone with experience in systems programming explain a legitimate use case for the uutils other than weakening the GPL? The auther even admits that several coreutils are still GNU in 26.04 which begs one to ask “why the rewrite?”
The goal is to create a more secure version of the program. Since (safe) rust eliminates entire classes of security relevant bugs, a rust version has the potential to be much more secure that the C version. And since rust can eliminate entire classes of bugs, we can put more energy into finding bugs like the ones presented in the article.
The weaker license is unfortunate, though.
plus Rust is a more modern language with better tool chain and language feature than C/C++
I was very confused by this sentence until I realized it’s a programming thingy.
If you write systems code in Rust
But… Rust is not a systems language.
what’s your definition of a system’s language?
Wait, what? How? It compiles down to bare metal without a runtime. People write OSes and program microcontrollers with it. For any arbitrary C program, it’s possible to write Rust code such that it compiles down to the same bytecode. Am I missing something?
Guess i’ve a different understanding of systems language.
Wait, I’m so confused, what’s your definition of a systems language?
One you use to manipulate the system / solve problem efficiently, vs. creating GUIs. Which has heavy repercussions on what types of developers use it, how the ecosystem and language is built. One metric to distinguish them is
new features / year; admin + hacker types want a stable & clever interface, companies and UI devs new features. And yeah, Rust is a bit of both of them, but has all the characteristics of the later.I have the feeling, you soon need a meta-language or extensive IDE-help to even use it. Just like C++.
edit: In hindsight, this sounds more silly than i thought. There was a great article about it i can’t find anymore, with the conclusion, that Rust is no systems language by that metric.
What does it mean to you then?
Say it louder for the people in the back!
