uutils coreutils 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, 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:
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.
The speedup is largest on CPUs without SHA-NI hardware acceleration. The
feature is a no-op on Windows (the pure-Rust implementations are always used
there) and is automatically bypassed at runtime for any algorithm libcrypto
refuses (for example, MD5 in strict FIPS mode).
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. uu-echo uu-cat):
make PROG_PREFIX=uu- 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.
To skip installation of completions and manpages:
make COMPLETIONS=n MANPAGES=n install
Manually install shell completions
The uudoc binary generates completions for the bash, elvish,
fish, powershell and zsh shells to stdout.
Install uudoc by
cargo install --bin uudoc --features uudoc --path .
Then use the installed binary:
uudoc completion <utility> <shell>
So, to install completions for ls on bash to
/usr/local/share/bash-completion/completions/ls, run:
uudoc completion ls bash > /usr/local/share/bash-completion/completions/ls.bash
Completion for prefixed cp with uu- on zsh is generated by
env PROG_PREFIX=uu- uudoc completion cp zsh
Manually install manpages
To generate manpages, the syntax is:
uudoc manpage <utility>
So, to install the manpage for ls to /usr/local/share/man/man1/ls.1 run:
uudoc manpage ls > /usr/local/share/man/man1/ls.1
Un-installation
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.
Uninstall with Cargo
To uninstall uutils:
cargo uninstall coreutils
Uninstall with GNU Make
To uninstall all utilities:
make uninstall
To uninstall every program with a set prefix:
make PROG_PREFIX=uu- 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
GNU test suite compatibility
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).
GNU Coreutils is licensed under the GPL 3.0 or later.
GNU coreutils 的 Rust 重写版——包括 ls、cp、cat、sort 这些经典命令行工具——目标是做成即插即用的替代品，输出和 GNU 完全一致。