uutils coreutils is a cross-platform reimplementation of the GNU coreutils 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
uutils aims to be a drop-in replacement for the GNU utils. Differences with GNU are treated as bugs.
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.
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.
- Rust (
cargo
,rustc
) - GNU Make (optional)
uutils follows Rust's release channels and is tested against stable, beta and
nightly. The current Minimum Supported Rust Version (MSRV) is 1.70.0
.
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
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
Building using make
is a simple process as well.
To simply build all available utilities:
make
In release mode:
make PROFILE=release
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'
Likewise, installing can simply be done using:
cargo install --path . --locked
This command will install uutils into Cargo's bin folder (e.g.
$HOME/.cargo/bin
).
This does not install files necessary for shell completion or manpages. For
manpages or shell completion to work, use GNU Make
or see
Manually install shell completions
/Manually install manpages
.
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
.
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
To generate manpages, the syntax is:
cargo run manpage <utility>
So, to install the manpage for ls
to /usr/local/share/man/man1/ls.1
run:
cargo run manpage ls > /usr/local/share/man/man1/ls.1
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.
To uninstall uutils:
cargo uninstall coreutils
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
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.
See https://github.com/orgs/uutils/projects/1 for the main meta bugs (many are missing).
To contribute to uutils, please see CONTRIBUTING.
uutils is licensed under the MIT License - see the LICENSE
file for details
GNU Coreutils is licensed under the GPL 3.0 or later.