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I mean, why is Ubuntu using it as default when it isnt 1.0?


Ubuntu is evaluating it as the default in order to see if it’s ready. That’s something you want to do before declaring something 1.0.

If it’s not ready, they’ll roll it back.

Part of why you have to do something like this is because the test suite just isn’t comprehensive, nor should we expect it to be. Real world usage is what shakes out the long tail of bugs. You just have to have some sort of stage like this in order to get things into a good state.


> they’ll roll it back.

They will absolutely not roll it back, not matter how broken they are.

The reasons to switch from coreutils to the Rust rewrite are purely political.


> Ubuntu is evaluating it as the default in order to see if it’s ready.

Did 100% of tests pass when Ubuntu made this decision? My understanding was no.


No. Because the tests that don’t pass are edge cases and corners that most people wouldn’t notice. It’s arguably more important to fix bugs that impact actual usage, so it can be a valid strategy to do this even before you hit 100% coverage, to help you prioritize the remaining bugs to fix.

In other words, there may be more serious bugs not in the test suite than the ones that aren’t passing that are in the suite. And you only find that out through real usage.


> Because the tests that don’t pass are edge cases and corners that most people wouldn’t notice.

This standard may be justified when there is significant benefit. There is not in this case. And some projects have stricter standards.[1]

> In other words, there may be more serious bugs not in the test suite than the ones that aren’t passing that are in the suite. And you only find that out through real usage.

You should assume everyone understands how Ubuntu's decision would benefit this project. You should assume most Ubuntu users do not care. You replied to a comment which told you this before.[2]

[1] https://lkml.org/lkml/2012/12/23/75

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46267541


> edge cases and corners that most people wouldn’t notice.

This is a horrible mindset for developing software people are supposed to rely on.


Every project prioritizes bugs. It is impossible to work on everything all at once.


This discussion is not about priorities in 1 project. It is about the replacement of a more mature project by a less mature project.


It is about discovering how less mature a project is so that its maturity can be improved. Nothing has been replaced yet. That decision will be made once its maturity has been evaluated.


> It is about discovering how less mature a project is so that its maturity can be improved.

Must I repeat? You should assume everyone understands how Ubuntu's decision would benefit this project. You should assume most Ubuntu users do not care.

> Nothing has been replaced yet.

Replace means put something in the place of another thing. Not eradicate the other thing.


Many of the utils, such as sort, aren't locale-aware. Considering that most of the world do not use English/ASCII, do you still consider that an irrelevant edge case?


I don't consider it irrelevant, but neither does uutils. However, it's also not something that is currently at a zero. I'm not even sure that this percentage of tests is related to locale support specifically. I'm sure parity will be reached here.

For example, sort has an open PR on it right now.


> I'm sure parity will be reached here.

And this project should be considered then. Not before.


I would be surprised if they decided to go ahead without more robust locale support, I agree with that.


They are testing it in a real world scenario before putting it into a LTS of theirs.


so they see issues that rise up from real world issues that tests might not cover? the same ubuntu version also bundles the latest kernel which is not considered stable to begin with.




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