Rust Coreutils 0.5 is now available as the latest milestone for this Rust-based alternative to GNU Coreutils. Rust Coreutils 0.5 continues moving closer to “full GNU compatibility” with nearly a 90% pass rate on the GNU test suite.
Rust Coreutils 0.5 is described in today’s announcement as “a significant milestone featuring comprehensive platform improvements” There are an additional 22 tests passing now that brings Rust Coreutils 0.5 up to an 87.75% pass rate for the GNU test suite.
I think the compatibility concerns are legit at least in principle. That said, if you look at the issues, 8 of the test failures are exotic edge cases in ‘tail’. I for one am not hitting these utilities hard enough to run into that kind of thing. These utilities are already good enough for most of us.
I am a fan of the benefits of Rust. The fact that RedoxOS and Ubuntu are shipping the same Coreutils as we exit 2025 is amazing.