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

Ionen Wolkens <[email protected]> Mon, 23 Mar 2026 06:35:29 -0400

Newsgroups	gmane.linux.gentoo.devel
Message-ID	<acEXcd91LAEs9f-a@eversor>

On Mon, Mar 23, 2026 at 09:53:32AM +0000, moltonel 3x Combo wrote:
> 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.

There's no need to remove it, but it'll only work one way similarly to
zlib-ng. Aka you can have zlib and zlib-ng[-compat] at same time *or*
only zlib-ng[compat] which blocks and replaces the original zlib.

> * 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
> 

-- 
ionen

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