Sylvestre Ledru | Searcharxiv

arXiv2026

Rust Coreutils: Rebuilding Unix Foundations in a Modern Language

GNU core utilities (coreutils) is a crucial package in modern UNIX systems. It comprises around 100 fundamental commands---like ls, cp, and cat---which run every day on millions of computers. However, GNU coreutils is also legacy software, with its C codebase dating back to the early 1990s and arguably feature-complete. If one were to consider reimplementing this essential package, how would they do so effectively, and why? This paper recounts the development of Rust coreutils, a contemporary open source reimplementation of GNU coreutils in the Rust programming language, which has reached the status of a drop-in replacement for GNU coreutils, compatible with most Linux distributions. By comparing Rust coreutils with its ancestor, we offer insights into creating a reliable substitute for critical software and highlight how modern programming features can attract development interest in legacy packages.

cs.SE↗

arXiv2022

SZZ in the time of Pull Requests

In the multi-commit development model, programmers complete tasks (e.g., implementing a feature) by organizing their work in several commits and packaging them into a commit-set. Analyzing data from developers using this model can be useful to tackle challenging developers' needs, such as knowing which features introduce a bug as well as assessing the risk of integrating certain features in a release. However, to do so one first needs to identify fix-inducing commit-sets. For such an identification, the SZZ algorithm is the most natural candidate, but its performance has not been evaluated in the multi-commit context yet. In this study, we conduct an in-depth investigation on the reliability and performance of SZZ in the multi-commit model. To obtain a reliable ground truth, we consider an already existing SZZ dataset and adapt it to the multi-commit context. Moreover, we devise a second dataset that is more extensive and directly created by developers as well as Quality Assurance (QA) engineers of Mozilla. Based on these datasets, we (1) test the performance of B-SZZ and its non-language-specific SZZ variations in the context of the multi-commit model, (2) investigate the reasons behind their specific behavior, and (3) analyze the impact of non-relevant commits in a commit-set and automatically detect them before using SZZ.

cs.SE↗