Comment by lionkor
14 days ago
I struggle to find anything on this post that wouldn't be caught by some kind of unit test or manual review, especially when comparing with the GNU source for the coreutils. The whole coreutils rewrite is a terrible idea[1] and clearly being done in the wrong way (without the knowledge gained from the previous software).
If you do a rewrite, you should fully understand and learn from the predecessor, otherwise youre bound to repeat all the mistakes. Embarassing.
To be clear; I love Rust, I use it for various projects, and it's great. It doesn't save you from bad engineering.
[1]: https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2000/04/06/things-you-should-...
> I struggle to find anything on this post that wouldn't be caught by some kind of unit test or manual review, especially when comparing with the GNU source for the coreutils.
> If you do a rewrite, you should fully understand and learn from the predecessor, otherwise youre bound to repeat all the mistakes. Embarassing.
Interestingly, the uutils project uses the GNU coreutils test suite.
EDITED to add: they also have a stated position of not allowing contributions based on reading the GPL'd source.
I expect nothing less from the creators of unity, upstart, and snap.
welcome new systems programmers: unix is broken and you must write ugly non-pedagogical workarounds and do empirical testing. this is what reliable software and good software engineering actually is... surprise!@#%