Re: Re: news item: Introduction of app-alternatives/coreutils

On Sun, 22 Mar 2026 at 23:48, Marc Schiffbauer <[email protected]> wrote:
> Why
> would someone want having installed both at the same time given that
> uutils are meant to be a drop-in replacement?

* We can currently co-install, removing that option would be a downgrade.
* User might not want to switch, but still use uutils for some
specific cases (eg I appreciate `cute -w`).
* Or the other way around: switch to uutils, but keep gnu for a
handful of usecases (eg `sort` on some locales).
* Could also be differences in performance, bugs, etc.
* Uutils is still new and not as trusted yet, it's good to be able to
test the waters and switch back easily.

> I can image shell scripts in the wild which may change their behavior
> unintentionally if some core commands are suddenly being replaced by a
> symlink instead.

Note that gnu coreutils can also be installed as symlinks.
USE=multicall in Gentoo installs shell wrappers for historical
reasons, but AFAICT using symlinks is becoming more common.

https://github.com/coreutils/coreutils/blob/5ec45a1aa5989e258013b68831b74527d4bdfade/NEWS#L2428

There are some cases of tools getting confused by symlinks, but
they're bugs of those tools, and not specific to uutils.

https://bugs.gentoo.org/716164
https://bugs.gentoo.org/963699