uutils coreutils

---

uutils is an attempt at writing universal (as in cross-platform) CLI utilities in Rust. While all programs have 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:

• User Manual
• Developer Documentation

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 1.60.0.

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:

$ git clone https://github.com/uutils/coreutils
$ cd coreutils

Cargo

Building uutils using Cargo is easy because the process is the same as for every other Rust program:

$ cargo build --release

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:

$ cargo build --release --features macos
# or ...
$ cargo build --release --features windows
# or ...
$ cargo build --release --features unix

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:

$ cargo build --features "base32 cat echo rm" --no-default-features

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:

$ cargo build -p uu_base32 -p uu_cat -p uu_echo -p uu_rm

GNU Make

Building using make is a simple process as well.

To simply build all available utilities:

$ make

To build all but a few of the available utilities:

$ make SKIP_UTILS='UTILITY_1 UTILITY_2'

To build only a few of the available utilities:

$ make UTILS='UTILITY_1 UTILITY_2'

Installation

Cargo

Likewise, installing can simply be done using:

$ cargo install --path .

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:

$ make install

To install using sudo switch -E must be used:

$ sudo -E make install

To install all but a few of the available utilities:

$ make SKIP_UTILS='UTILITY_1 UTILITY_2' install

To install only a few of the available utilities:

$ make UTILS='UTILITY_1 UTILITY_2' install

To install every program with a prefix (e.g. uu-echo uu-cat):

$ make PROG_PREFIX=PREFIX_GOES_HERE install

To install the multicall binary:

$ make MULTICALL=y install

Set install parent directory (default value is /usr/local):

# DESTDIR is also supported
$ make PREFIX=/my/path install

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.

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:

cargo run completion <utility> <shell>

So, to install completions for ls on bash to /usr/local/share/bash-completion/completions/ls, run:

cargo run completion ls bash > /usr/local/share/bash-completion/completions/ls

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:

$ cargo uninstall uutils

GNU Make

To uninstall all utilities:

$ make uninstall

To uninstall every program with a set prefix:

$ make PROG_PREFIX=PREFIX_GOES_HERE uninstall

To uninstall the multicall binary:

$ make MULTICALL=y uninstall

To uninstall from a custom parent directory:

# DESTDIR is also supported
$ make PREFIX=/my/path uninstall

Testing

Testing can be done using either Cargo or make.

Cargo

Just like with building, we follow the standard procedure for testing using Cargo:

$ cargo test

By default, cargo test only runs the common programs. To run also platform specific tests, run:

$ cargo test --features unix

If you would prefer to test a select few utilities:

$ cargo test --features "chmod mv tail" --no-default-features

If you also want to test the core utilities:

$ cargo test  -p uucore -p coreutils

To debug:

$ gdb --args target/debug/coreutils ls
(gdb) b ls.rs:79
(gdb) run

GNU Make

To simply test all available utilities:

$ make test

To test all but a few of the available utilities:

$ make SKIP_UTILS='UTILITY_1 UTILITY_2' test

To test only a few of the available utilities:

$ make UTILS='UTILITY_1 UTILITY_2' test

To include tests for unimplemented behavior:

$ make UTILS='UTILITY_1 UTILITY_2' SPEC=y test

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

$ make busytest

To run busybox tests for a few of the available utilities

$ make UTILS='UTILITY_1 UTILITY_2' busytest

To pass an argument like "-v" to the busybox test runtime

$ make UTILS='UTILITY_1 UTILITY_2' RUNTEST_ARGS='-v' busytest

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:

$ bash util/build-gnu.sh
$ bash util/run-gnu-test.sh
# To run a single test:
$ bash util/run-gnu-test.sh tests/touch/not-owner.sh # for example
# To run several tests:
$ bash util/run-gnu-test.sh tests/touch/not-owner.sh tests/rm/no-give-up.sh # for example
# If this is a perl (.pl) test, to run in debug:
$ DEBUG=1 bash util/run-gnu-test.sh tests/misc/sm3sum.pl

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:

1. 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.
2. Build both the GNU and Rust coreutils using: bash util/build-gnu.sh
3. Run the test with bash util/run-gnu-test.sh <your test>
4. Start to modify <your test> to understand what is wrong. Examples:
   1. Add set -v to have the bash verbose mode
   2. Add echo $? where needed
   3. When the variable fail is used in the test, echo $fail to see when the test started to fail
   4. Bump the content of the output (ex: cat err)
   5. ...
5. Or, if the test is simple, extract the relevant information to create a new test case running both GNU & Rust implementation
6. Start to modify the Rust implementation to match the expected behavior
7. 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 uutils#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
md5sum (replaced by hashsum)
sha1sum (replaced by hashsum)
sha224sum (replaced by hashsum)
sha256sum (replaced by hashsum)
sha384sum (replaced by hashsum)
sha512sum (replaced by hashsum)
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.