have any suggestions how they plan to go about it, and to minimize conflicts
between your work and theirs. But otherwise, all of these are fair game.
-Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>:
- Add BB_NOMMU to platform.h and migrate __uClinux__ tests to that.
- #if defined __UCLIBC__ && !defined __ARCH_USE_MMU__
- Add a libbb/platform.c
- Implement fdprintf() for platforms that haven't got one.
- Implement bb_realpath() that can handle NULL on non-glibc.
- Cleanup bb_asprintf()
-
- Migrate calloc() and bb_calloc() occurrences to bb_xzalloc().
+Rob Landley suggested this:
+ Implement bb_realpath() that can handle NULL on non-glibc.
+
Remove obsolete _() wrapper crud for internationalization we don't do.
Figure out where we need utf8 support, and add it.
sh
- The command shell situation is a big mess. We have three or four different
+ The command shell situation is a mess. We have two different
shells that don't really share any code, and the "standalone shell" doesn't
work all that well (especially not in a chroot environment), due to apps not
- being reentrant. I'm writing a new shell (bbsh) to unify the various
- shells and configurably add the minimal set of bash features people
- actually use. The hardest part is it has to configure down as small as
- lash while providing lash's features. The rest is easy in comparison.
- bzip2
- Compression-side support.
- init
- General cleanup (should use ENABLE_FEATURE_INIT_SYSLOG and ENABLE_FEATURE_INIT_DEBUG).
- Unify base64 handling.
- There's base64 encoding and decoding going on in:
- networking/wget.c:base64enc()
- coreutils/uudecode.c:read_base64()
- coreutils/uuencode.c:tbl_base64[]
- networking/httpd.c:decodeBase64()
- And probably elsewhere. That needs to be unified into libbb functions.
+ being reentrant.
+
Do a SUSv3 audit
Look at the full Single Unix Specification version 3 (available online at
"http://www.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/009695399/nfindex.html") and
Even better would be some kind of automated compliance test harness that
exercises each command line option and the various corner cases.
+
Internationalization
How much internationalization should we do?
initramfs
Busybox should have a sample initramfs build script. This depends on
bbsh, mdev, and switch_root.
-
-
-Bernhard Fischer <rep.nop@anon.at>:
- Makefile stuff:
- make -j is broken, -j1 is forced atm
+ mkdep
+ Write a mkdep that doesn't segfault if there's a directory it doesn't
+ have permission to read, isn't based on manually editing the output of
+ lexx and yacc, doesn't make such a mess under include/config, etc.
+ Group globals into unions of structures.
+ Go through and turn all the global and static variables into structures,
+ and have all those structures be in a big union shared between processes,
+ so busybox uses less bss. (This is a big win on nommu machines.) See
+ sed.c and mdev.c for examples.
+ Go through bugs.busybox.net and close out all of that somehow.
+ This one's open to everybody, but I'll wind up doing it...
+
+
+Bernhard Reutner-Fischer <busybox@busybox.net> suggests to look at these:
New debug options:
-Wlarger-than-127
+ Cleanup any big users
Collate BUFSIZ IOBUF_SIZE MY_BUF_SIZE PIPE_PROGRESS_SIZE BUFSIZE PIPESIZE
- Use bb_common_bufsiz1?
+ make bb_common_bufsiz1 configurable, size wise.
+ make pipesize configurable, size wise.
+ Use bb_common_bufsiz1 throughout applets!
As yet unclaimed:
-----
-find
- doesn't understand (), lots of susv3 stuff.
----
diff
Make sure we handle empty files properly:
From the patch man page:
- you can remove a file by sending out a context diff that compares
- the file to be deleted with an empty file dated the Epoch. The
- file will be removed unless patch is conforming to POSIX and the
- -E or --remove-empty-files option is not given.
+ you can remove a file by sending out a context diff that compares
+ the file to be deleted with an empty file dated the Epoch. The
+ file will be removed unless patch is conforming to POSIX and the
+ -E or --remove-empty-files option is not given.
---
patch
Should have simple fuzz factor support to apply patches at an offset which
And while we're at it, a new patch filename quoting format is apparently
coming soon: http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=git&m=112927316408690&w=2
---
-man
- It would be nice to have a man command. Not one that handles troff or
- anything, just one that can handle preformatted ascii man pages, possibly
- compressed. This could probably be a script in the extras directory that
- calls cat/zcat/bzcat | less
-
- (How doclifter might work into this is anybody's guess.)
----
ar
- Write support?
+ Write support!
---
-crond
- turn FEATURE_DEBUG_OPT into ENABLE_FEATURE_CROND_DEBUG_OPT
+stty / catv
+ stty's visible() function and catv's guts are identical. Merge them into
+ an appropriate libbb function.
+---
+struct suffix_mult
+ Several duplicate users of: grep -r "1024\*1024" * -B2 -A1
+ Merge to a single size_suffixes[] in libbb.
+ Users: head tail od_bloaty hexdump and (partially as it wouldn't hurt) svlogd
+---
+tail
+ ./busybox tail -f foo.c~ TODO
+ should not print fmt=header_fmt for subsequent date >> TODO; i.e. only
+ fmt+ if another (not the current) file did change
Architectural issues:
---
Text buffer support.
Several existing applets (sort, vi, less...) read
- a whole file into memory and act on it. There might be an opportunity
- for shared code in there that could be moved into libbb...
+ a whole file into memory and act on it. Use open_read_close().
---
Memory Allocation
We have a CONFIG_BUFFER mechanism that lets us select whether to do memory
allocation on the stack or the heap. Unfortunately, we're not using it much.
We need to audit our memory allocations and turn a lot of malloc/free calls
into RESERVE_CONFIG_BUFFER/RELEASE_CONFIG_BUFFER.
- For a start, see e.g. make CFLAGS_EXTRA=-Wlarger-than-64
+ For a start, see e.g. make EXTRA_CFLAGS=-Wlarger-than-64
And while we're at it, many of the CONFIG_FEATURE_CLEAN_UP #ifdefs will be
optimized out by the compiler in the stack allocation case (since there's no
FEATURE_CLEAN_UP
This is more an unresolved issue than a to-do item. More thought is needed.
- Normally we rely on exit() to free memory, close files, and unmap segments
+ Normally we rely on exit() to free memory, close files and unmap segments
for us. This makes most calls to free(), close(), and unmap() optional in
busybox applets that don't intend to run for very long, and optional stuff
can be omitted to save size.
jumps out of the normal flow control and bypasses any cleanup code we
put at the end of our applets.
- It's possible to add hooks to libbb functions like xmalloc() and bb_xopen()
+ It's possible to add hooks to libbb functions like xmalloc() and xopen()
to add their entries to a linked list, which could be traversed and
freed/closed automatically. (This would need to be able to free just the
entries after a checkpoint to be usable for a forkless standalone shell.
For right now, exit() handles it just fine.
-
Minor stuff:
watchdog.c could autodetect the timer duration via:
if(!ioctl (fd, WDIOC_GETTIMEOUT, &tmo)) timer_duration = 1 + (tmo / 2);
---
use bb_perror_msg where appropriate: See
egrep "[^_]perror"
----
- Remove superfluous fmt occurances: e.g.
- fprintf(stderr, "%s: %s not found\n", "unalias", *argptr);
- -> fprintf(stderr, "unalias: %s not found\n", *argptr);
---
possible code duplication ingroup() and is_a_group_member()
---
- unify itoa: netstat.c, hush.c, lash.c, msh.c
- Put one single, robust version into e.g. safe_strtol.c
+ Move __get_hz() to a better place and (re)use it in route.c, ash.c
---
-
+ See grep -r strtod
+ Alot of duplication that wants cleanup.
+---
+ in_ether duplicated in network/{interface,ifconfig}.c
+---
+ unify progress_meter. wget, flash_eraseall, pipe_progress, fbsplash, setfiles.
+---
+ support start-stop-daemon -d <chdir-path>
Code cleanup:
Replace deprecated functions.
-bzero() -> memset()
----
-sigblock(), siggetmask(), sigsetmask(), sigmask() -> sigprocmask et al
---
vdprintf() -> similar sized functionality
---
+(TODO list after discussion 11.05.2009)
+
+* shrink tc/brctl/ip
+ tc/brctl seem like fairly large things to try and tackle in your timeframe,
+ and i think people have posted attempts in the past. Adding additional
+ options to ip though seems reasonable.
+
+* add tests for some applets
+
+* implement POSIX utilities and audit them for POSIX conformance. then
+ audit them for GNU conformance. then document all your findings in a new
+ doc/conformance.txt file while perhaps implementing some of the missing
+ features.
+ you can find the latest POSIX documentation (1003.1-2008) here:
+ http://www.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9699919799/
+ and the complete list of all utilities that POSIX covers:
+ http://www.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9699919799/idx/utilities.html
+ The first step would to generate a file/matrix what is already archived
+ (also IPV6)
+
+* ntpdate/ntpd (see ntpclient and openntp for examples)
+
+* implement 'at'
+
+* rpcbind (former portmap) or equivalent
+ so that we don't have to use -o nolock on nfs mounts
+
+* check IPV6 compliance
+
+* generate a mini example using kernel+busybox only (+libc) for example
+
+* more support for advanced linux 2.6.x features, see: iotop
+ most likely there is more
+
+* even more support for statistics: mpstat, iostat, powertop....
+
+
+Unicode work needed:
+
+Unicode support uses libc multibyte functions if LOCALE_SUPPORT is on
+(in this case, the code will also support many more encodings),
+or uses a limited subset of re-implemented multibyte functions
+which only understand "one byte == one char" and unicode.
+This is useful if you build against uclibc with locale support disabled.
+
+Unicode-dependent applets must call check_unicode_in_env() when they
+begin executing.
+
+Applet code may conditionalize on FEATURE_ASSUME_UNICODE
+in order to use more efficient code if unicode support is not requested.
+
+Available functions (if you need more, implement them in libbb/unicode.c
+so that they work without LOCALE_SUPPORT too):
+
+int bb_mbstrlen(str) - multibyte-aware strlen
+size_t mbstowcs(wdest, src, n)
+size_t wcstombs(dest, wsrc, n)
+size_t wcrtomb(str, wc, wstate)
+int iswspace(wc)
+int iswalnum(wc)
+int iswpunct(wc)
+
+Applets which only need to align columns on screen correctly:
+
+ls - already done, use source as an example
+df
+dumpleases
+lsmod
+
+Applets which need to account for Unicode chars
+while processing the output:
+
+[un]expand
+fold
+man
+watch
+cut (-b and -c are currently the same, needs fixing)
+
+These applets need to ensure that unicode input
+is handled correctly (say, <unicode><backspace> sequence):
+
+getty, login
+rm -i
+unzip (overwrite prompt)
+
+Viewers/editors are more difficult (many cases to get right).
+libbb/lineedit.c is an example how to do it:
+
+less, most, ed, vi
+awk
+[ef]grep
+sed
+
+Probably needs some specialized work:
+
+loadkeys