unixwin/WinuxCmd

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The problem, in one sentence

You're on Windows and you need grep -rn, sed -i, find -exec, xargs -0 — and every option so far is a compromise:

• WSL — 1 GB+ install, and a VM filesystem boundary between you and your files
• Cygwin — path-translation gymnastics and a 2–5 s startup
• GnuWin32 — abandoned in 2012, stuck at 60% compatibility
• uutils — a great Rust project, but ~100 commands and ~600 options

WinuxCmd skips the compromise. A single native Win32 executable that speaks GNU syntax on Windows paths: 176 commands, 1,924 options — with ongoing differential testing against a GNU coreutils 9.7 oracle (178 cases, 165 pass, 13 tracked platform diffs).

176	1,924	178 cases	3,659	~4 MB
commands	options¹	GNU diff · 93% pass	unit tests · 99.6% pass	single binary

¹ 1,924 = OPTION( macro count in src/commands/. Command count excludes the internal wpm manager and the [ bracket alias of test. Differential corpus: 178 cases across 84 commands (165 pass / 13 known platform diffs, tests/differential/baseline.json). See the GNU comparison report.

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⚡ Unix muscle memory on Windows

# Every GNU flag you know, on real Windows paths
ls -la
grep -rn "TODO" src/
sed -i 's/http:/https:/g' config.ini
find . -name "*.tmp" -exec rm {} \;

# Full pipelines, zero setup — command links land on your PATH,
# so there are no prefixes and nothing to configure
find . -name "*.cpp" -print0 | xargs -0 wc -l

# And when a tool shouldn't be reimplemented, WPM installs the real thing
wpm install jq

💾 Install

winget	winget install WinuxCmd (ID caomengxuan666.WinuxCmd)
Installer (recommended)	Grab WinuxCmd-<version>-x64-setup.exe (or the ARM64 setup) from GitHub Releases
Portable	Unzip WinuxCmd-<version>-win-x64.zip anywhere and add it to your PATH
Build from source	VS 2022 + CMake 3.30 + Ninja — see Building from source

🔏 Code signing

Test-release binaries are code-signed via the SignPath Foundation; formal release signing is pending SignPath approval.

📦 Editions (1.2.0+)

WinuxCmd ships in two editions built from the same source:

	Default edition	Full edition
Assets	WinuxCmd-<version>-win-<arch>.*	WinuxCmd-<version>-win-<arch>-full.*
Entry links	All commands except the full-only names below	All 178 entries
wpm index	yes	not indexed — standalone download only

Full-only commands: the default edition does not create entry links for [ · env · false · kill · test · time · true. These commands' user-facing semantics are defined by your host shell's builtins, so an kill.exe-style entry on PATH advertises a dispatch the builtin actually owns. The commands remain fully implemented in the multicall binary — winuxcmd kill -9 <pid> works in both editions. echo, printf and pwd deliberately keep their entries. The full edition materializes every entry link; its asset name always carries the -full qualifier, and the definition of the split lives in one place (src/core/package_edition.h).

🚀 Why WinuxCmd

• 🪟 Native, not emulated — talks to Win32 APIs directly. Understands C:\, UNC paths and NTFS ACLs (with cygpath and getfacl for bridging). No VM, no runtime DLLs, instant startup.
• 🧠 GNU where it counts — find alone implements 88 options (full expression parser, -exec/-execdir/-ok, -printf); grep ships PCRE2; sed supports in-place -i editing.
• 📦 WPM built in — a package manager for the tools that shouldn't be reimplemented: jq, ripgrep, fd, fzf, bat, make, neovim, curl, wget…
• 🧪 Tested like it matters — 3,659 unit tests, plus a 178-case differential suite byte-compared against authoritative upstream sources (GNU coreutils 9.7, findutils 4.10.0, grep 3.12, sed 4.9, patch 2.7.6, util-linux 2.41, procps-ng 4.0.4). Every command audited line-by-line; reports in tests/differential/audit-*.md.
• ⚡ Small, fast, PGO-built — 3.79 MB for 176 commands, statically linked, zero dependencies, ~19 ms cold start. Published x64 binaries are Profile-Guided Optimization builds trained on real workloads (sort −18%, nl −17% vs the same code without PGO). Methodology and data: DOCS/performance-roadmap.md.

🐂 Better together: the niubash shell

WinuxCmd gives Windows real Unix commands. niubash gives them a real bash language to live in — the same unixwin org, two halves of one workflow:

# In niubash (native bash on Windows — no WSL):
for f in *.log; do
  grep -c ERROR "$f" | xargs -I{} echo "$f: {} errors"
done | sort -t: -k2 -rn | head -5

• Real bash semantics — if/for/functions/arrays/pipelines run on niubash, powered by its rubash engine, green across niubash's local GNU Bash upstream gate (86/86).
• Agent-friendly — niu -c is quiet and deterministic: no banners, stable stdout/stderr, exact exit codes. The shell your AI tooling already speaks.
• Zero glue — niubash injects WinuxCmd's command links onto the PATH at startup, so grep, sed and find above are the real binaries you're looking at right now.

Ship WinuxCmd alone in a 3 MB exe, or drop in niubash (v1.4.4) and get the whole bash workflow.

📦 WPM package manager

wpm install jq          # JSON processor
wpm install goawk       # awk implementation
wpm install bsdtar      # BSD tar
wpm install openssh     # SSH client
wpm install make        # GNU make
wpm install neovim      # text editor
wpm install curl        # URL transfer
wpm install wget        # network downloader

wpm search json         # discover packages
wpm list --all          # see what's installed

Details in the WPM User Guide.

🆚 How it compares

Feature	WinuxCmd	uutils (Rust)	GnuWin32	Cygwin	busybox
Commands	176	~100	~90	~200	~300
Options	1,924	~600	~200	Full	~500
GNU compat	93% diff pass	95%	60%	99%	70%
Native Win32	✅	❌	✅	❌	❌
Package manager	✅ WPM	❌	❌	apt-cyg	❌
Test cases	3,659	~2,000	0	—	~100
Binary size	~3 MB	~5 MB	—	1 GB+	—
Startup	Instant	Instant	—	2–5 s	—
Maintained	✅ 2026	✅	❌ since 2012	✅	❌

Detailed comparison: vs uutils / GnuWin32 / Cygwin

vs uutils/coreutils (Rust)

Aspect	WinuxCmd	uutils
Language	C++23	Rust
Commands	176	~100
Options	1,924	~600
Binary size	~3 MB	~5 MB
Dependencies	None	Rust runtime
Build time	2 min	15 min
Package manager	WPM built-in	None

vs GnuWin32

Aspect	WinuxCmd	GnuWin32
Maintenance	Active	Abandoned
Last update	2026	2012
Windows support	Win10/11	WinXP+
Modern toolchain	C++23, CMake	C, autotools

vs Cygwin

Aspect	WinuxCmd	Cygwin
Install size	~3 MB	1 GB+
Startup time	Instant	2–5 s
Path handling	Native Windows	Unix emulation
Dependencies	None	MSYS2 runtime
Package manager	WPM	apt-cyg

🧰 Command coverage

176 commands — full coverage table (click to expand)

GNU Coreutils (83 commands)

Category	Commands	Differential status
File Ops	cp, mv, rm, ln, install, mkdir, rmdir, touch, unlink	✅ mostly verified; cp has 9+ options rejected on Windows (issue-140)
Text Processing	cat, echo, head, tail, sort, uniq, cut, tr, wc, fold, fmt, join, comm	✅ diff PASS except fmt (OUT_DIFF, issue-140)
Directory Listing	ls, dir, vdir	✅ ls PASS; dir Windows-columnar by design
Search	find, xargs	✅
Crypto/Hash	base64, base32, basenc, md5sum, sha1sum, sha256sum, sha384sum, sha512sum, b2sum, cksum, sum	✅
Date/Time	date, touch, time, timeout	✅
System Info	uname, hostname, id, whoami, users, groups, nproc, uptime, arch	⚠️ whoami/users/groups thin stubs (≤1 declared option each)
Disk	df, du, stat	⚠️ stat deep-path gap (OUT_DIFF, issue-140)
Env/Expr	env, printenv, expr, seq, yes, true, false	✅
Text Format	pr, nl, expand, unexpand, column, paste, tsort, ptx	⚠️ tsort and ptx output-format gaps (OUT_DIFF, issue-140)
File Info	file, stat, readlink, realpath, dirname, basename, pathchk, sync	⚠️ stat deep-path; file no-magic stub
Process	nice, nohup, stdbuf	⚠️ nice thin (1 option); stdbuf EXIT_DIFF (issue-140)
Permissions	chmod, chown, chgrp, chroot	⚠️ Linux ownership/SELinux options rejected on Windows
Other	shred, factor, kill, truncate, fmt, numfmt, mktemp, dircolors, sum, csplit, split	⚠️ fmt OUT_DIFF gap

GNU findutils/grep/sed (3 commands)

Command	Options	Features
find	88	Full expression parser, -exec/-execdir/-ok, -printf
grep	49	PCRE2 support, --color, --exclude patterns
sed	17	In-place editing, extended regex, --posix

BSD tools (15 commands)

cal, column, hexdump, logger, tree, less, more, strings, rev, tsort, seq, sleep, nohup, watch, tput

Process management (13 commands)

ps, top, kill, killall, pgrep, pkill, pidof, pldd, free, uptime, renice, stdbuf, timeout

Cygwin/MSYS2 (14 commands)

cygpath, dos2unix, unix2dos, d2u, u2d

System info (16 commands)

hostname, id, who, pinky, stty, infocmp, tic, toe, locale, tput, getconf, getfacl, ldd, lsof, file, man

Custom extensions (10+ commands)

wpm (package manager), mpicalc, regtool, mkpasswd, mkgroup, mkfifo, mknod, clear, reset, tzset

🏃 Benchmarks

Test	WinuxCmd	uutils	GNU (WSL2)
cat (100 MB)	0.8 s	0.9 s	0.7 s
sort (1M lines)	2.1 s	2.3 s	1.9 s
grep (100 MB)	1.2 s	1.1 s	1.0 s
find (10K files)	0.3 s	0.4 s	0.2 s

Consistently in the same league as uutils — and within ~10–15% of native GNU running under WSL2, without booting a VM.

Benchmark environment: Windows 11, Intel i7-13700K, 32 GB RAM, NVMe SSD

🧪 Testing and GNU verification

• 3,659 automated unit tests — 99.6% pass rate
• Differential corpus: 178 test cases (131 corpus + 47 regressions, covering 84 commands), executed against a GNU coreutils 9.7 oracle with identical inputs — 165 pass / 13 tracked diffs (93%), machine-checked in tests/differential/baseline.json
• Automated GNU comparison: scripts/compare_outputs.sh and gnu_comparison_tests.sh; per-case runner: tests/differential/runner.sh

Tracked diffs (13)	Command / case	Reason
id -g	regressions/21-id-group	platform: Windows has no POSIX gid; prints primary-group RID (197121)
cp -l, ln	regressions/23-cp-link-option, ln/35-hard	environment: hardlinks across \\wsl.localhost 9p unsupported in the WSL-side runner; verified on native NTFS
mkdir exists	mkdir/30-exists	format: GNU uses locale-dependent curly quotes (U+2018/2019); winuxcmd uses ASCII '
dd, envsubst, mktemp, namei, readlink, which, seq	9 remaining cases	output-format/platform differences; per-case state lives in tests/differential/baseline.json

The eight former issue-140 gaps (dd, diff -u, tsort, fmt, stat, sdiff, ptx, stdbuf) all pass; normal-format diff hunk-header, hash-family separator, cksum line-ending, realpath forward-slash, and od -c octal-escaping gaps were all found and fixed in 2026-09.

See the GNU Comparison Report.

📚 Documentation

Document	Description
Compatibility Matrix	Support status of all 176 commands
GNU Comparison Report	Differential testing vs a GNU coreutils 9.7 oracle
Windows Features	Windows-specific behavior
WPM Guide	Package manager user guide
GNU Test Baseline	GNU test framework

🛠️ Building from source

Prerequisites: Visual Studio 2022+ · CMake 3.30+ · Ninja · Rust toolchain (see below)

# Build
./scripts/build-with-vs.ps1

# Build the full edition (all entry links, "-full" asset names)
cmake -B build-full -G Ninja -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release -DWINUXCMD_PACKAGE_EDITION=full

# Run tests
./scripts/build-with-vs.ps1 -Target winuxcmd-tests
build-vs/tests/winuxcmd-tests.exe

Rust toolchain requirements (rust2 command library, #1488)

WinuxCmd 2.0 replaces selected applets with a Rust implementation (rust2/crates/winuxcmd-ffi), built as a staticlib and folded into winuxcmd.exe by the same link run — there are no separate Rust artifacts to install or distribute.

• Install rustup (stable) plus both MSVC targets: rustup target add x86_64-pc-windows-msvc aarch64-pc-windows-msvc. The aarch64 target is required even on an x64 host when you cross-build arm64 (vcvarsall x64_arm64) — cargo builds the staticlib with --target for the C++ target architecture, and the ARM64 std library is not part of a default installation. CI pins the toolchain version (RUST2_TOOLCHAIN in .github/workflows/build-winuxcmd.yml).
• Switch semantics: the CMake option WINUXCMD_ENABLE_RUST2 defaults ON when cargo is found and OFF when it is not; passing -DWINUXCMD_ENABLE_RUST2=ON without cargo is a configure-time error.
• Degradation without Rust: there is no C++ fallback. A rust-less build simply omits the replaced commands (currently true and false) from the applet set — they are never dual-tracked (#1550) — so a Rust-less build has a smaller command surface.
• Cross-arch consistency: CI enforces that the x64 and arm64 packages carry the same rust2 surface (rust2-surface-check job); a local arm64 build fails at configure/link time without the aarch64 target installed.

Profile-Guided Optimization (x64): release CI builds the published x64 binary with PGO automatically — instrumented build, training workloads, then an /USEPROFILE relink. To reproduce locally:

./scripts/build-pgo.ps1          # -> build-pgo/usr/bin/winuxcmd.exe

Training workloads (scripts/pgo-train.sh) are ported from uutils/coreutils' build-pgo.sh, so profiles stay machine-independent. ARM64 builds are not PGO'd: profile collection must run on the target architecture.

🤝 Contributing

Contributions welcome — see CONTRIBUTING.md.

License

MIT — see LICENSE.

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