Fil-C[0] can compile GNU coreutils, it has stronger* memory safety guarantees than rust, none of the compatibility issues that a wholesale rewrite has, and performance that seems to be within about a factor of two[1] compared to the normally compiled code..

[0]: https://fil-c.org/.

[1]: https://bannalia.blogspot.com/2025/11/comparing-run-time-per...

* Guaranteed to crash rather than potentially grant arbitrary code execution.