On Sat, Jun 27, 2026 at 11:25:51AM -0700, Collin Funk wrote: > Hi, > > Let me begin by mentioning that I am an active contributor to the GNU > coreutils. I mention this for transparency, although this message > primarily addresses social concerns that I have, rather than technical > ones. Therefore, I hope it is not disregarded for being biased. > > On May 8, 2025, Julian Andres Klode requested the addition of the > "gnu-coreutils" package so that "coreutils" could be made a virtual > package that dispatched to different providers [1]. The maintainer of > the "coreutils" Debian package said that he would not make this change > without discussion on debian-devel [2], which I feel is reasonable. > Remember that "coreutils" is an "Essential" package and therefore needs > to be treated with extra care [3]. > > This change was obviously an attempt to make the lives of Canonical, who > employees Julian Andres Klode, easier. A few months before the request > for the "gnu-coreutils" package, Canonical announced they were > replacing GNU coreutils with uutils coreutils [4]. > > As far as I can tell, the request to discuss this on debian-devel was > never respected. The only brief discussion of coreutils on debian-devel > since these events were when someone noticed that the "coreutils" > package in Debian Expiremental used "coreutils-from-*" packages to > choose between GNU, uutils, busybox, or toybox [5]. > > Around that time, I had noticed that uutils coreutils was made the > default in Debian Expiremental. You can see that this is still the case > with the following: > > $ podman run --rm -it debian:bookworm > $ echo 'Types: deb deb-src > URIs: http://deb.debian.org/debian/ > Suites: experimental > Components: main contrib non-free non-free-firmware > Signed-By: /usr/share/keyrings/debian-archive-keyring.gpg' > > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/experimental.sources > $ { apt update -y; apt upgrade -y; } >/dev/null 2>&1 > $ apt -t experimental install coreutils > Reading package lists... Done > Building dependency tree... Done > Reading state information... Done > The following package was automatically installed and is no longer > required: > libattr1 > Use 'apt autoremove' to remove it. > The following additional packages will be installed: > coreutils-from-uutils rust-coreutils > The following NEW packages will be installed: > coreutils-from-uutils rust-coreutils > The following packages will be upgraded: > coreutils > 1 upgraded, 2 newly installed, 0 to remove and 10 not upgraded. > Need to get 4650 kB of archives. > After this operation, 6871 kB of additional disk space will be used. > > I also noticed the uutils website says the following [6]: > > Debian is also following Ubuntu's path toward making uutils the default. > A Google Summer of Code 2024 project - "Improve support of the Rust > coreutils in Debian" - was mentored to accelerate the integration. The > package is also inherited by downstream Debian-based distributions > including Raspbian, Kali Linux, Parrot OS, PureOS, and deepin 23. > > It seems that a small handful of people are unilaterally making the > decision to switch the default Debian install from GNU coreutils to > uutils coreutils, which concerns me. I had hoped that the plan was to > bring this up on debian-devel, as originally requested, but I have not > seen any indication that is the case over the past few months.
Just for the record: I added busybox and toybox variants, and uploaded the package to experimental per Helmut's request as he wanted to explore those alternatives. Whether Debian wants to switch or not is not my decision. Debian has a procedure for making changes, which is the maintainer doing whatever the fuck they want and if anyone disagrees escalating to the CTTE if necessary. The maintainer chose to delegate that decision process to the mailing list which is their prerogative, but I do not have the means to start, lead, or even participate in discussions, so I offer the experiment that was requested, and if anyone wants to pursue this further that's on them to coordinate. -- debian developer - deb.li/jak | jak-linux.org - free software dev ubuntu core developer i speak de, en
