coreutils

uutils coreutils 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. We provide prebuilt binaries, manpages, and shell completions from main branch at https://github.com/uutils/coreutils/releases/tag/latest-commit . The latest stable tag https://github.com/uutils/coreutils/releases/latest also exists for reproducible products and packagers. Bug reporters should use binary from latest commit. Minimal compatible glibc version is same with ubuntu-latest runner. Use coreutils-*-musl if coreutils-*-gnu is not compatible with your system. Goals uutils coreutils aims to be a drop-in replacement for the GNU utils. Differences with GNU are treated as bugs. Our key objectives include: Matching GNU's output (stdout and error code) exactly Better error messages: at a terminal, a parse error is shown as a compiler-style report with a caret under the argument at fault, where GNU prints a single line (see error diagnostics); scripts and pipes still get the plain GNU message Providing comprehensive internationalization support (UTF-8) Continuously improving performance; significant slowdowns relative to other coreutils implementations are treated as bugs Extensions when relevant (example: --progress) uutils aims to work on as many platforms as possible, to be able to use the same utils on Linux, macOS, *BSD, Windows, WASI and other platforms. This ensures, for example, that scripts can be easily transferred between platforms. uutils coreutils ships by default on Ubuntu since version 25.10. 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. Use weblate/rust-coreutils to translate the Rust coreutils into your language. You can try the utilities in your browser through the WebAssembly playground, without installing anything. Requirements Rust (cargo, rustc) GNU Make (optional) Rust Version uutils follows Rust's release channels and is tested against stable, beta and nightly. 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 Replace --release with --profile=release-small to optimize binary size. 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 windows # or ... cargo build --release --features unix # or ... cargo build --release --target wasm32-wasip1 --no-default-features --features feat_wasm To build SELinux-specific features, including chcon and runcon, ensure that libselinux and libclang are installed on your system. Then, run the following command: cargo build --release --features unix,feat_selinux To speed up the checksum utilities (md5sum, sha1sum, sha224sum, sha256sum, sha384sum, sha512sum, and cksum) by using OpenSSL's libcrypto instead of the pure-Rust digest crates, enable the openssl feature: cargo build --release --features openssl By default OpenSSL is built from source and statically linked into the binary, so no runtime dependency on system libcrypto/libssl is added. To link dynamically against the system libcrypto instead, set OPENSSL_NO_VENDOR=1 at build time. MinGW (Windows) needs OPENSSL_STATIC=0 too for dynamic linkage. The speedup is largest on CPUs without SHA-NI hardware acceleration. aws-lc backend is used on MSVC. Setting AWS_LC_SYS_NO_JITTER_ENTROPY=1 at build time is recommended to reduce size of binary. 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 want to build the utilities as individual binaries, that is also possible: cargo build --release --bins --workspace --exclude coreutils --exclude uu_runcon --exclude uu_chcon Each utility is contained in its own package within the main repository, named "uu_UTILNAME". To build selected individual utilities, use 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 (with debug profile): 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' Installation Install with Cargo 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. Install with GNU Make To install all available utilities (PROFILE=release by default): 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. u