uutils coreutils
uutils is an attempt at writing universal (as in cross-platform) CLI utilities in Rust. While all programs hve been implemented, some options might be missing or different behavior might be experienced.
To install it:
$ cargo install coreutils
$ ~/.cargo/bin/coreutils
Why?
uutils aims to work on as many platforms as possible, to be able to use the same utils on Linux, Mac, Windows and other platforms. This ensures, for example, that scripts can be easily transferred between platforms. Rust was chosen not only because it is fast and safe, but is also excellent for writing cross-platform code.
Documentation
uutils has both user and developer documentation available:
Both can also be generated locally, the instructions for that can be found in the coreutils docs repository.
Requirements
- Rust (
cargo
,rustc
) - GNU Make (optional)
Rust Version
uutils follows Rust's release channels and is tested against stable, beta and nightly.
The current Minimum Supported Rust Version (MSRV) is 1.56.1
.
Building
There are currently two methods to build the uutils binaries: either Cargo or GNU Make.
Building the full package, including all documentation, requires both Cargo and Gnu Make on a Unix platform.
For either method, we first need to fetch the repository:
Cargo
Building uutils using Cargo is easy because the process is the same as for every other Rust program:
This command builds the most portable common core set of uutils into a multicall (BusyBox-type) binary, named 'coreutils', on most Rust-supported platforms.
Additional platform-specific uutils are often available. Building these expanded sets of uutils for a platform (on that platform) is as simple as specifying it as a feature:
# or ...
# or ...
If you don't want to build every utility available on your platform into the final binary, you can also specify which ones you want to build manually. For example:
If you don't want to build the multicall binary and would prefer to build
the utilities as individual binaries, that is also possible. Each utility
is contained in its own package within the main repository, named
"uu_UTILNAME". To build individual utilities, use cargo to build just the
specific packages (using the --package
[aka -p
] option). For example:
GNU Make
Building using make
is a simple process as well.
To simply build all available utilities:
To build all but a few of the available utilities:
To build only a few of the available utilities:
Installation
Cargo
Likewise, installing can simply be done using:
This command will install uutils into Cargo's bin folder (e.g. $HOME/.cargo/bin
).
This does not install files necessary for shell completion. For shell completion to work,
use GNU Make
or see Manually install shell completions
.
GNU Make
To install all available utilities:
To install using sudo
switch -E
must be used:
To install all but a few of the available utilities:
To install only a few of the available utilities:
To install every program with a prefix (e.g. uu-echo uu-cat):
To install the multicall binary:
Set install parent directory (default value is /usr/local):
# DESTDIR is also supported
Installing with make
installs shell completions for all installed utilities
for bash
, fish
and zsh
. Completions for elvish
and powershell
can also
be generated; See Manually install shell completions
.
NixOS
The standard package set of NixOS provides this package out of the box since 18.03:
$ nix-env -iA nixos.uutils-coreutils
Manually install shell completions
The coreutils
binary can generate completions for the bash
, elvish
, fish
, powershell
and zsh
shells. It prints the result to stdout.
The syntax is:
So, to install completions for ls
on bash
to /usr/local/share/bash-completion/completions/ls
,
run:
Un-installation
Un-installation differs depending on how you have installed uutils. If you used Cargo to install, use Cargo to uninstall. If you used GNU Make to install, use Make to uninstall.
Cargo
To uninstall uutils:
GNU Make
To uninstall all utilities:
To uninstall every program with a set prefix:
To uninstall the multicall binary:
To uninstall from a custom parent directory:
# DESTDIR is also supported
Testing
Testing can be done using either Cargo or make
.
Cargo
Just like with building, we follow the standard procedure for testing using Cargo:
By default, cargo test
only runs the common programs. To run also platform
specific tests, run:
If you would prefer to test a select few utilities:
If you also want to test the core utilities:
To debug:
()
()
GNU Make
To simply test all available utilities:
To test all but a few of the available utilities:
To test only a few of the available utilities:
To include tests for unimplemented behavior:
Run Busybox Tests
This testing functionality is only available on *nix operating systems and
requires make
.
To run busybox tests for all utilities for which busybox has tests
To run busybox tests for a few of the available utilities
To pass an argument like "-v" to the busybox test runtime
Comparing with GNU
Below is the evolution of how many GNU tests uutils passes. A more detailed breakdown of the GNU test results of the main branch can be found in the user manual.
To run locally:
# To run a single test:
# If this is a perl (.pl) test, to run in debug:
Note that it relies on individual utilities (not the multicall binary).
Improving the GNU compatibility
The Python script ./util/remaining-gnu-error.py
shows the list of failing tests in the CI.
To improve the GNU compatibility, the following process is recommended:
- Identify a test (the smaller, the better) on a program that you understand or is easy to understand. You can use the
./util/remaining-gnu-error.py
script to help with this decision. - Build both the GNU and Rust coreutils using:
bash util/build-gnu.sh
- Run the test with
bash util/run-gnu-test.sh <your test>
- Start to modify
<your test>
to understand what is wrong. Examples:- Add
set -v
to have the bash verbose mode - Add
echo $?
where needed - When the variable
fail
is used in the test,echo $fail
to see when the test started to fail - Bump the content of the output (ex:
cat err
) - ...
- Add
- Or, if the test is simple, extract the relevant information to create a new test case running both GNU & Rust implementation
- Start to modify the Rust implementation to match the expected behavior
- Add a test to make sure that we don't regress (our test suite is super quick)
Contributing
To contribute to uutils, please see CONTRIBUTING.
Utilities
Please note that this is not fully accurate:
- Some new options can be added / removed in the GNU implementation;
- Some error management might be missing;
- Some behaviors might be different.
See https://github.com/uutils/coreutils/issues/3336 for the main meta bugs (many are missing).
Done | WIP |
---|---|
arch | cp |
base32 | date |
base64 | dd |
basename | df |
basenc | expr |
cat | install |
chcon | ls |
chgrp | more |
chmod | numfmt |
chown | od (--strings and 128-bit data types missing) |
chroot | pr |
cksum | printf |
comm | sort |
csplit | split |
cut | tac |
dircolors | test |
dirname | dir |
du | vdir |
echo | stty |
env | |
expand | |
factor | |
false | |
fmt | |
fold | |
groups | |
hashsum | |
head | |
hostid | |
hostname | |
id | |
join | |
kill | |
link | |
ln | |
logname | |
mkdir | |
mkfifo | |
mknod | |
mktemp | |
mv | |
nice | |
nl | |
nohup | |
nproc | |
paste | |
pathchk | |
pinky | |
printenv | |
ptx | |
pwd | |
readlink | |
realpath | |
relpath | |
rm | |
rmdir | |
runcon | |
seq | |
shred | |
shuf | |
sleep | |
stat | |
stdbuf | |
sum | |
sync | |
tail | |
tee | |
timeout | |
touch | |
tr | |
true | |
truncate | |
tsort | |
tty | |
uname | |
unexpand | |
uniq | |
unlink | |
uptime | |
users | |
wc | |
who | |
whoami | |
yes |
License
uutils is licensed under the MIT License - see the LICENSE
file for details
GNU Coreutils is licensed under the GPL 3.0 or later.