This is going to sound like a gripe and I swear it isn't, but is there a plan for a reasonably full suite of minimal userspace tools? I don't expect util-linux itself in Rust, but something like:
- coreutils
- findutils
- libmagic and file
- tar and some compression libs
- grep, awk, sed
- the shell and all of its builtins
- something functionally equivalent to openssl or GnuTLS
- some ssh client and server
- curl
- a terminal-based editor
- man-db and texinfo
- some init system and bootloader
- pick a package manager, any package manager, and rewrite it in Rust
Barring all of that, maybe just busybox but written in Rust. That should give you roughly what you need for a non-graphical system. coreutils isn't nothing, but it's a pretty small part of the system, with much of it ending up implemented by the shell in most distros.
systemd sort of did this to certain parts and it's the worst thing that happened to Linux. Standardizing on Rust political rewrites of tar and libmagic is going to be an epic disaster and a decade of never-ending fun for Rust evangelicals.
also worth mentioning that the ones that are user facing are much lower priority than machine facing one. no one cares about CVEs in ed, but a CVE in cp would be really bad
- coreutils
- findutils
- libmagic and file
- tar and some compression libs
- grep, awk, sed
- the shell and all of its builtins
- something functionally equivalent to openssl or GnuTLS
- some ssh client and server
- curl
- a terminal-based editor
- man-db and texinfo
- some init system and bootloader
- pick a package manager, any package manager, and rewrite it in Rust
Barring all of that, maybe just busybox but written in Rust. That should give you roughly what you need for a non-graphical system. coreutils isn't nothing, but it's a pretty small part of the system, with much of it ending up implemented by the shell in most distros.