minix VS coreutils

The pull requests list is better than the issues list.

This non-bug asks for a video on how to use OpenSSH:

* https://github.com/Stichting-MINIX-Research-Foundation/minix...

This one was fixed in 2017:

* https://github.com/Stichting-MINIX-Research-Foundation/minix...

This non-bug asks for where to start when learning:

* https://github.com/Stichting-MINIX-Research-Foundation/minix...

I've gone through quite a few of these at random, for this and another comment on this page, and this one is the first one that is even close to an outstanding bug, and it's only open because the pull request that fixed the problem back in 2020 hasn't been merged yet.

* https://github.com/Stichting-MINIX-Research-Foundation/minix...

The original is forever frozen in time as a memorial to Terry’s genius, but there is an (at least somewhat) actively maintained fork, which has added features of which Terry himself would not have approved - https://github.com/Zeal-Operating-System/ZealOS is the main one, which was last updated only a couple of months ago; Minix’s last commit appears to have been in 2018 - https://github.com/Stichting-MINIX-Research-Foundation/minix

But maybe that’s the answer for MINIX too - maybe one of the people who have authored all those unreviewed PRs might start a community-based fork. If all the activity moves to the fork, there is a chance the originators might officially bless it

If I’m looking correctly , your repository repo only includes this part of the minix repo and not the other tools, correct?

MINIX: https://github.com/Stichting-MINIX-Research-Foundation/minix/blob/master/bin/ls/ls.c

> Be the change you want to see in the world.

I have made dozens of commits to MINIX3, including a brand-new ISO 9660 file system implementation (https://github.com/Stichting-MINIX-Research-Foundation/minix...).

I have made more than a hundred commits to SerenityOS (https://github.com/SerenityOS/serenity/commits?author=boricj).

Just because I deplore the general state of security in mainstream operating systems doesn't mean that I demand that someone else does something about it for free.

I'm not paid to fix security bugs in the Linux kernel, do you expect me to fix these myself for free just because you want to? No one is entitled to my own free time spent hacking on random stuff.

Not a lot of activity on the github. Minix

It is practically abandoned, since at least 2017. The minix3 group is somewhat active, but it is mostly from students asking questions. The git repo is still up, and there is a GitHub with slow, but not stopped activity.

https://github.com/coreutils/coreutils/commit/fcfba90d0d27a1...

A summary of other changes just released in GNU coreutils 9.5 are:

* mv accepts --exchange to swap files

> some are simple like yes(1)

Not that simple: https://github.com/coreutils/coreutils/blob/master/src/yes.c

The -S / --split-string option[1] of /usr/bin/env is a relatively recent addition to GNU Coreutils. It's available starting from GNU Coreutils 8.30[2], released on 2018-07-01.

Beware of portability: it relies on a non-standard behavior from some operating systems. It only works for OS's that treat all the text after the first space as argument(s) to the shebanged executable; rather than just treating the whole string as an executable path (that can happen to contain spaces).

Fortunately this non-standard behavior is more the norm than the exception: it works at least on modern GNU/Linux, BSDs, and macOS.

[1] https://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/manual/html_node/env-...

[2] https://github.com/coreutils/coreutils/blob/b09dc6306e7affaf...

> building a cat from scratch

> That would be an interesting project.

Here is the source code of the OpenBSD implementation of cat:

> https://github.com/openbsd/src/blob/master/bin/cat/cat.c

and here of the GNU coreutils implementation:

> https://github.com/coreutils/coreutils/blob/master/src/cat.c

Thus: I don't think building a cat from scratch or creating a tutorial about that topic is particularly hard (even though the HN audience would likely be interested in it). :-)

the yes command, writing to /dev/null, is making IO calls, which interfere with predictable scheduling.

If you look at the source code for yes, https://github.com/coreutils/coreutils/blob/master/src/yes.c

it builds a buffer of output and then writes that in a for loop

  while (full_write (STDOUT_FILENO, buf, bufused) == bufused)

Looking at the source of nohup, if the execvp() of the child happens then it _must_ have already done the signal (SIGHUP, SIG_IGN) so - WTF?

This got me wondering so I went and looked and it seems like lo and behold there was actually a commit to the GNU ls source just 2 weeks ago.

https://github.com/coreutils/coreutils/blob/master/src/ls.c

"maint: prefer char32_t to wchar_t"

even an empty file? Yes. so now it was a file with a copyright disclaimer and nothing else. And the koan-like question comes to mind is "Can you copyright nothing?" well AT&T sure tried.

Then somebody said our programs should be well defined and not depend on a fluke of unix, which at this point was probable a good idea. so it became "exit 0"

Then somebody said we should write our system utilities in C instead of shell so it runs faster. openbsd still has a good example of how this would look.

http://cvsweb.openbsd.org/cgi-bin/cvsweb/~checkout~/src/usr....

At some point gnu bureaucracy got involved and said all programs must support the '-h' flag. so that got added, then they said all programs must support locale so that got added. now days gnu true is an astonishing 80 lines long.

https://github.com/coreutils/coreutils/blob/master/src/true....

http://trillian.mit.edu/~jc/humor/ATT_Copyright_true.html

> Yes, ls is maintained. Although, maintained is a very strong word. It exists.

Why would it be a strong word? Here it is, in src/ls.c: https://github.com/coreutils/coreutils

It is then packaged by tens of operating system distributions, who themselves maintain extra patchsets, some of which are then upstreamed.

It is installed and used on millions (billions?) of devices, for 3 decades.

It's a very reliable and trusty "sharp stick of metal" :)