around to it some time. If you have any good ideas, please let me know.
* login/sulogin/passwd/getty/etc are part of tinylogin, and so are not
- needed or wanted in busybox (or else I'd have to link in libcrypt).
+ needed or wanted in busybox (or else I'd have to link to libcrypt).
* Networking apps are probably going to be split out some time soon into a
- separate package (named perhaps tiny-netkit?). This currently includes
- hostid, hostname, mnc, and ping.
-
+ separate package (named perhaps netkit-tiny?). This would remove the
+ following items from BusyBox: hostid, hostname, nc, nslookup, telnet,
+ and ping. nfs mounting and syslogd (when it supports network logging)
+ will remain in BusyBox.
-Erik
-----------
-* Allow tar to create archives with sockets, devices, and other special files
-* Make insmod actually work
-* dnsdomainname
-* traceroute/netstat
-* rdate
-* hwclock
-* killall
-* stty
-* tr
-* cut
-* expr (maybe?) (ash builtin?)
+Bugs that need fixing:
+ - 'ln -n' has been disabled for this release, till we can fix a memory
+ corruption bug.
+ - fix 'cp' (or test suite script) so that it passes the last item in
+ the test suite.
+ - ps dirent race bug (need to stat the file before attempting chdir)
+ - Make 'ln -s /tmp/file .' work the way GNU ln does (i.e. makes a link to
+ /tmp/file in the current directory, rather then trying and failing to create
+ a symlink named "." in the current working directory).
+ - Prune sfdisk, graft in std fdisk instead
------------------------
+We will rework these to use libc regex functions instead (as per the mailing
+list discussion):
+ - 'grep foo$ file' doesn't work
+ - 'grep *foo file' segfaults
-Compile with debugging on, run 'nm --size-sort ./busybox'
-and then start with the biggest things and make them smaller...
+-----------
------------------------
+Linux 2.4.x kernels
+BusyBox 0.46 currently will not work with the Linux 2.4.x kernels.
+I know of the following problems:
-busybox.defs.h is too big and hard to follow.
+1) BusyBox NFS support is broken with 2.4.x (needs to be adjusted for NFSv3 and
+ kernel header changes).
-I either need to add a better build system (like the Linux kernel?)
-or I need to split up busybox.defs.h into coherent chunks (i.e.
-busybox.defs.h just has a bunch of:
+As long as I have BB_FEATURE_NFSMOUNT turned off, everything compiles cleanly
+for me with linux2.4.0test2. I use Debian potato (gcc 2.95.2, GNU libc 2.1.3).
+Of course, as noted above, compiling != working.
-#include "fileutils.h"
-#include "shellutils.h"
+-----------
-which would then have smaller sets of #defines...
-Hmm. Needs to be carefully thought out.
+* Make insmod actually work
+* dnsdomainname
+* traceroute/netstat
+* rdate
+* hwclock
+* stty
+* expr
+* wget (or whatever I call it)
+* tftp
+* ftp
+* group/commonize strings, remove dups (for i18n, l10n)
+* consider making a unified option parser (if it can be done
+ modular, small, etc.)
-----------------------
+Running the following:
--rw-r--r-- 1000/1000 4398 2000-01-06 21:55 uniq.c
--rw-r--r-- 1000/1000 1568 1999-10-20 18:08 update.c
--rw-r----- 0/1000 1168 2000-01-29 21:03 update.o
--rw-r--r-- 1000/1000 22820 2000-01-05 11:36 utility.c
--rw-r----- 0/1000 7372 2000-01-29 21:03 utility.o
-tar: Skipping to next file header
-tar: Skipping to next file header
-tar: Archive - EOF not on block boundary
-tar: Error is not recoverable: exiting now
+ rm -f busybox && make LDFLAGS+=-nostdlib 2>&1 | \
+ sed -ne 's/.*undefined reference to `\(.*\)..*/\1/gp' | sort | uniq
+reveals the list of all external (i.e. libc) things that BusyBox depends on.
+It would be a very nice thing to reduce this list to an absolute minimum, and
+then create a microLibc to provide these functions. There is no good reason
+for GNU libc to be so big. I'm sure it can be a lot better.
-#1 You are storing by id instead of name like normal tar. Did you realize this?
-(or am I missing some compile option? )ctar did not do this, and I don't think
-it's a good idea for LRP.
+(BTW, this is more informative if BB_FEATURE_NFSMOUNT is turned off...)
-#2
-ctar did not produce the EOF error like your tar does. I believe you need to
-pad the end of the archive with at least 2 tarsized (512byte) blocks. (I
-think???)
+Most wanted list:
-#3
-There is no exclude file(s) option to tar. LRP's packaging system can not
-function without this. Will you have the time to add this soon?
+ [andersen@slag busybox]$ grep -l getgroups *.[ch]
+ test.c
+Policy violation. getgroups uses libc nss, which is unlikely
+to be present in an embedded system.
-----------------------
-cd /mnt
-mkdir BACKUP
-mv * BACKUP
+Compile with debugging on, run 'nm --size-sort ./busybox'
+and then start with the biggest things and make them smaller...
-Today, "mv" behaved as a cp -a and my disk becomed full. It does not
-work properly either when renaming a directory into something else
-(it produces a lot of disk activity when doing this).
+-----------------------
+busybox.defs.h is too big and hard to follow.
------------------------
+Perhaps I need to add a better build system (like the Linux kernel?)
+-----------------------
Feature request:
can support (an optionnal -s should be used for symbolic links instead
of hard links).
-
-----------------------
-----------------------
- In utility.c:copyFile: It uses followLinks for both source and
- destination files... is that right for `mv'? Will need to revisit
- the GNU, freeBSD, and MINIX versions for this... Should read the
- Unix98 and POSIX specs also.
-
------------------------
-
I think that the add_inode &c in utility.c needs to also stow the
st_dev field, and that du.c should NOT call `reset_inode_list'
because there can be hard links from inside one argv/ to inside
------------------------------------------------------------------
+An interesting email listing some apps that use /proc. BusyBox
+tries to avoid /proc as mush as is possible, so this stuff is
+interesting (to me at least):
+
Date: Fri, 25 Feb 2000 08:23:12 +0000 (GMT)
From: Riley Williams <rhw@MemAlpha.CX>