3/26/2026 at 2:41:13 PM
Ubuntu's rollout of a Rust-based coreutils replacement had a bug [0] that, among other things, broke automatic updates.and the bug was...not subtle, either. it just silently ignored the documented behavior of `date -r` (printing the modtime of a file) [1, 2]
as a time synchronization nerd, I've been following ntpd-rs's development, and tested it out as a possible replacement for Chrony. my overall impression is that like rust-coreutils, it's a well-intentioned project but not ready for prime-time, certainly not at the level of "installed by default on Ubuntu" (even in a non-LTS release)
for example, there's an issue that's been open for ~9 months about logging being unnecessarily verbose, and flooding the system journal [3].
and an issue titled "implement new algorithm" opened by one of the core contributors, with zero description or details [4].
these are not the hallmarks of a stable, mature open-source project.
0: https://lwn.net/Articles/1043103/
1: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45687743
2: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45688185
by evil-olive
3/26/2026 at 3:44:23 PM
I count 132 packages in cargo.lock.chrony has some dependencies too but for important optional features like seccomp or capability dropping that I don't think ntpd-rs even implements...
by cozzyd