1 <!--#include file="header.html" -->
5 <li><b>23 March, 2007 -- BusyBox 1.5.0 (unstable)</b>
6 <p><a href=http://busybox.net/downloads/busybox-1.5.0.tar.bz2>BusyBox 1.5.0</a>.
7 (<a href=http://busybox.net/downloads/fixes-1.5.0/>patches</a>,
8 <a href=http://busybox.net/fix.html>how to add a patch</a>)</p>
10 <p>Since this is a x.x.0 release, it probably does not deserve "stable"
11 label. Please help making 1.5.1 stable by testing 1.5.0.</p>
12 <p>Notable changes since previous release:
14 <li>find: added support for -user, -not, fixed -mtime, -mmin, -perm
15 <li>[de]archivers: merge common logic into one module
16 <li>ping[6]: unified code for both
17 <li>less: regex search improved
18 <li>ash: more readable code, testsuite added
19 <li>sed: several very obscure bugs fixed
20 <li>chown: -H, -L, -P support (required by POSIX)
21 <li>tar: handle (broken) checksums a-la Sun; tar restores mode again
22 <li>grep: implement -w, "implement" -a and -I by ignoring them
23 <li>cp: more sane behavior when overwriting existing files
24 <li>init: stop doing silly things with the console (-400 bytes)
25 <li>httpd: make httpd usable for NOMMU CPUs; fix POSTDATA handling bugs
26 <li>httpd: run interpreter for configured file extensions in any dir,
29 <li>SELinux: SELinux-related code and -Z option added to several applets,
30 new SELinux-specific applets: chcon, runcon.
31 <li>Build system: produces link map, uses -Wwrite-strings to catch
32 improper usage of string constants.
33 <li>Data and bss section usage audited and reduced - should help NOMMU
35 <li>Applets with bug fixes: gunzip, vi, syslogd, dpkg, ls, adjtimex, resize,
36 sv, printf, diff, awk, sort, dpkg, diff, tftp
37 <li>Applets with usability improvements: swapon, more, ifup/ifdown, hwclock,
38 udhcpd, start_stop_daemon, cmp
39 <li>Applets with code cleaned up: telnet, fdisk, fsck_minix, mkfs_minix,
40 syslogd, swapon, runsv, svlogd, klogd
45 <li><b>18 March, 2007 -- BusyBox 1.4.2 (stable)</b>
46 <p><a href=http://busybox.net/downloads/busybox-1.4.2.tar.bz2>BusyBox 1.4.2</a>.
49 <p>This release includes only trivial fixes accumulated since 1.4.1.
53 <li><b>25 January, 2007 -- BusyBox 1.4.1 (stable)</b>
54 <p><a href=http://busybox.net/downloads/busybox-1.4.1.tar.bz2>BusyBox 1.4.1</a>.
55 (<a href=http://busybox.net/downloads/fixes-1.4.1/>patches</a>)</p>
57 <p>This release includes only trivial fixes accumulated since 1.4.0.
61 <li><b>20 January, 2007 -- BusyBox 1.4.0 (stable)</b>
62 <p><a href=http://busybox.net/downloads/busybox-1.4.0.tar.bz2>BusyBox 1.4.0</a>.
63 (<a href=http://busybox.net/downloads/fixes-1.4.0/>patches</a>)</p>
65 <p>Since this is a x.x.0 release, it probably is a bit less "stable"
67 <p>Changes since previous release:
69 <li>e2fsprogs are mostly removed from busybox. Some smaller parts remain,
70 the rest of it sits disabled in e2fsprogs/old_e2fsprogs/*, because
71 it's too bloated. Really. I'm afraid it's about the only way we can
72 ever get e2fsprogs cleaned up.
73 <li>less: many improvements. Now can display binary files
74 (although I expect it to have trouble with displays where 8bit chars
75 don't have 1-to-1 char/glyph relationship). Regexp search is not buggy
76 anymore. Less does not read entire input up-front. Reads input
77 as it appears (yay!). Works rather nice as man pager. I recommend it
79 <li>IPv6: generic support is in place, many networking applets are
80 upgraded to be IPv6 capable. Probably some work remains, but it is
81 already much better than what we had previously.
82 <li>arp: new applet (thanks to Eric Spakman).
83 <li>fakeidentd: non-forking standalone server part was taking ~90%
84 of the applet. Factored it out (in fact, rewrote it).
85 <li>syslogd: mostly rewritten.
86 <li>decompress_unzip, gzip: sanitized a bit.
87 <li>sed: better hadling of NULs
88 <li>httpd: stop adding our own "Content-type:" to CGI output
89 <li>chown: user.grp works again.
90 <li>minor bugfixes to: passwd, date, tftp, start_stop_daemon, tar,
91 ps, ifupdown, time, su, stty, awk, ping[6], sort,...
96 <li><b>20 January, 2007 -- BusyBox 1.3.2 (stable)</b>
97 <p><a href=http://busybox.net/downloads/busybox-1.3.2.tar.bz2>BusyBox 1.3.2</a>.</p>
99 <p>This release includes only one trivial fix accumulated since 1.3.1
103 <li><b>27 December, 2006 -- BusyBox 1.3.1 (stable)</b>
104 <p><a href=http://busybox.net/downloads/busybox-1.3.1.tar.bz2>BusyBox 1.3.1</a>.
105 (<a href=http://busybox.net/downloads/fixes-1.3.1/>patches</a>)</p>
107 <p>Closing 2006 with new release. It includes only trivial fixes accumulated since 1.3.0
111 <li><b>14 December, 2006 -- BusyBox 1.3.0 (stable)</b>
112 <p><a href=http://busybox.net/downloads/busybox-1.3.0.tar.bz2>BusyBox 1.3.0</a>.
113 (<a href=http://busybox.net/downloads/fixes-1.3.0/>patches</a>)</p>
115 <p>This release has CONFIG_DESKTOP option which enables features
116 needed for busybox usage on desktop machine. For example, find, chmod
117 and chown get several less frequently used options, od is significantly
118 bigger but matches GNU coreutils, etc. Intended to eventually make
119 busybox a viable alternative for "standard" utilities for slightly
120 adventurous desktop users.
121 <p>Changes since previous release:
123 <li>find: taking many more of standard options
124 <li>ps: POSIX-compliant -o implemented
126 <li>grep: added -r, fixed -h
127 <li>watch: make it exec child like standard one does (was totally
129 <li>tar: fix limitations which were preventing bbox tar usage
130 on big directories: long names and linknames, pax headers
131 (Linux kernel tarballs have that). Fixed a number of obscure bugs.
132 Raised max file limit (now 64Gb). Security fixes (/../ attacks).
133 <li>httpd: added -i (inetd), -f (foreground), support for
134 directory indexer CGI (example is included), bugfixes.
135 <li>telnetd: fixed/improved IPv6 support, inetd+standalone support,
136 other fixes. Useful IPv6 stuff factored out into libbb.
137 <li>runit/*: new applets adapted from http://smarden.sunsite.dk/runit/
138 (these are my personal favorite small-and-beautiful toys)
139 <li>minor bugfixes to: login, dd, mount, umount, chmod, chown, ln, udhcp,
140 fdisk, ifconfig, sort, tee, mkswap, wget, insmod.
142 <p>Note that GnuPG key used to sign this release is different.
143 1.2.2.1 is also signed post-factum now. Sorry for the mess.
147 <li><b>29 October, 2006 -- BusyBox 1.2.2.1 (fix)</b>
148 <p><a href=http://busybox.net/downloads/busybox-1.2.2.1.tar.bz2>BusyBox 1.2.2.1</a>.</p>
150 <p>Added compile-time warning that static linking against glibc
151 produces buggy executables.
154 <li><b>24 October, 2006 -- BusyBox 1.2.2 (stable)</b>
155 <p>It's a bit overdue, but
156 <a href=http://busybox.net/downloads/busybox-1.2.2.tar.bz2>here is
157 BusyBox 1.2.2</a>.</p>
159 <p>This release has dozens of fixes backported from the ongoing development
160 branch. There are a couple of bugfixes to sed, two fixes to documentation
161 generation (BusyBox.html shouldn't have USE() macros in it anymore), fix
162 umount to report the right errno on failure and to umount block devices by
163 name with newer kernels, fix mount to handle symlinks properly, make mdev
164 delete device nodes when called for hotplug remove, fix a segfault
165 in traceroute, a minor portability fix to md5sum option parsing, a build
166 fix for httpd with old gccs, an options parsing tweak to hdparm, make test
167 fail gracefully when getgroups() returns -1, fix a race condition in
168 modprobe when two instances run at once (hotplug does this), make "tar xf
169 foo.tar dir/dir" extract all subdirectories, make our getty initialize the
170 terminal more like mingetty, an selinux build fix, an endianness fix in
171 ping6, fix for zcip defending addresses, clean up some global variables in
172 gzip to save memory, fix sulogin -tNNN, a help text tweak, several warning
173 fixes and build fixes, fixup dnsd a bit, and a partridge in a pear tree.</p>
175 <p>As <a href=http://lwn.net/Articles/202106/>Linux Weekly News noted</a>,
176 this is my (Rob's) last release of BusyBox. The new maintainer is Denis
177 Vlasenko, I'm off to do <a href=http://landley.net/code>other things</a>.
181 <li><b>29 September, 2006 -- New license email address.</b>
182 <p>The email address gpl@busybox.net is now the recommended way to contact
183 the Software Freedom Law Center to report BusyBox license violations.</p>
185 <li><b>31 July 2006 -- BusyBox 1.2.1 (stable)</b>
186 <p>Since nobody seems to have objected too loudly over the weekend, I
187 might as well point you all at
188 <a href="http://busybox.net/downloads/busybox-1.2.1.tar.bz2">Busybox
189 1.2.1</a>, a bugfix-only release with no new features.</p>
191 <p>It has three shell fixes (two to lash: going "var=value" without
192 saying "export" should now work, plus a missing null pointer check, and
193 one to ash when redirecting output to a file that fills up.) Fix three
194 embarassing thinkos in the new dmesg command. Two build tweaks
195 (dependencies for the compressed usage messages and running make in the
196 libbb subdirectory). One fix to tar so it can extract git-generated
197 tarballs (rather than barfing on the pax extensions). And a partridge
198 in a pear... Ahem.</p>
200 <p>But wait, there's more! A passwd changing fix so an empty
201 gecos field doesn't trigger a false objection that the new passwd contains
202 the gecos field. Make all our setuid() and setgid() calls check the return
203 value in case somebody's using per-process resource limits that prevent
204 a user from having too many processes (and thus prevent a process from
205 switching away from root, in which case the process will now _die_ rather
206 than continue with root privileges). A fix to adduser to make sure that
207 /etc/group gets updated. And a fix to modprobe to look for modules.conf
208 in the right place on 2.6 kernels.</p>
210 <li><b>30 June 2006 -- BusyBox 1.2.0</b>
211 <p>The -devel branch has been stabilized and the result is
212 <a href="http://busybox.net/downloads/busybox-1.2.0.tar.bz2">Busybox
213 1.2.0</a>. Lots of stuff changed, I need to work up a decent changelog
214 over the weekend.</p>
216 <p>I'm still experimenting with how long is best for the development
217 cycle, and since we've got some largeish projects queued up I'm going to
218 try a longer one. Expect 1.3.0 in December. (Expect 1.2.1 any time
219 we fix enough bugs. :)</p>
221 <p>Update: Here are <a href="http://busybox.net/downloads/busybox-1.2.0.fixes.patch">the first few bug fixes</a> that will go into 1.2.1.</p>
223 <li><b>17 May 2006 -- BusyBox 1.1.3 (stable)</b>
224 <p><a href="http://busybox.net/downloads/busybox-1.1.3.tar.bz2">BusyBox
225 1.1.3</a> is another bugfix release. It makes passwd use salt, fixes a
226 memory freeing bug in ls, fixes "build all sources at once" mode, makes
227 mount -a not abort on the first failure, fixes msh so ctrl-c doesn't kill
228 background processes, makes patch work with patch hunks that don't have a
229 timestamp, make less's text search a lot more robust (the old one could
230 segfault), and fixes readlink -f when built against uClibc.</p>
232 <p>Expect 1.2.0 sometime next month, which won't be a bugfix release.</p>
234 <li><b>10 April 2006 -- BusyBox 1.1.2 (stable)</b>
235 <p>You can now download <a href="http://busybox.net/downloads/busybox-1.1.2.tar.bz2">BusyBox 1.1.2</a>, a bug fix release consisting of 11 patches
236 backported from the development branch: Some build fixes, several fixes
237 for mount and nfsmount, a fix for insmod on big endian systems, a fix for
238 find -xdev, and a fix for comm. Check the file "changelog" in the tarball
241 <p>The next new development release (1.2.0) is slated for June. A 1.1.3
242 will be released before then if more bug fixes crop up. (The new plan is
243 to have a 1.x.0 new development release every 3 months, with 1.x.y stable
244 bugfix only releases based on that as appropriate.)</p>
246 <li><b>27 March 2006 -- Software Freedom Law Center representing BusyBox and uClibc</b>
247 <p>One issue Erik Andersen wanted to resolve when handing off BusyBox
248 maintainership to Rob Landley was license enforcement. BusyBox and
249 uClibc's existing license enforcement efforts (pro-bono representation
250 by Erik's father's law firm, and the
251 <a href="http://www.busybox.net/shame.html">Hall of Shame</a>), haven't
252 scaled to match the popularity of the projects. So we put our heads
253 together and did the obvious thing: ask Pamela Jones of
254 <a href="http://www.groklaw.net">Groklaw</a> for suggestions. She
255 referred us to the fine folks at softwarefreedom.org.</p>
257 <p>As a result, we're pleased to announce that the
258 <a href="http://www.softwarefreedom.org">Software Freedom Law Center</a>
259 has agreed to represent BusyBox and uClibc. We join a number of other
260 free and open source software projects (such as
261 <a href="http://lwn.net/Articles/141806/">X.org</a>,
262 <a href="http://lwn.net/Articles/135413/">Wine</a>, and
263 <a href="http://plone.org/foundation/newsitems/software-freedom-law-center-support/">Plone</a>
264 in being represented by a fairly cool bunch of lawyers, which is not a
265 phrase you get to use every day.</p>
267 <li><b>22 March 2006 -- BusyBox 1.1.1</b>
268 <p>The new maintainer is Rob Landley, and the new release is <a href="http://busybox.net/downloads/busybox-1.1.1.tar.bz2">BusyBox 1.1.1</a>. Expect a "what's new" document in a few days. (Also, Erik and I have have another announcement pending...)</p>
269 <p>Update: Rather than put out an endless stream of 1.1.1.x releases,
270 the various small fixes have been collected together into a
271 <a href="http://busybox.net/downloads/busybox-1.1.1.fixes.patch">patch</a>,
272 and new fixes will be appended to that as needed. Expect 1.1.2 around
275 <li><b>11 January 2006 -- 1.1.0 is out</b>
276 <p>The new stable release is
277 <a href="http://www.busybox.net/downloads/busybox-1.1.0.tar.bz2">BusyBox
278 1.1.0</a>. It has a number of improvements, including several new applets.
279 (It also has <a href="http://www.busybox.net/lists/busybox/2006-January/017733.html">a few rough spots</a>,
280 but we're trying out a "release early, release often" strategy to see how
281 that works. Expect 1.1.1 sometime in March.)</p>
283 <li><b>Old News</b><p>
284 <a href="/oldnews.html">Click here to read older news</a>
291 <!--#include file="footer.html" -->