-TODO list for busybox in no particular order. Just because something
-is listed here doesn't mean that it is going to be added to busybox,
-or that doing so is even a good idea. It just means that I _might_ get
-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 to libcrypt).
-
-* Networking apps are probably going to be split out some time soon into a
- 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
-
------------
-
-Bugs that need fixing:
-
- - 'grep foo$ file' doesn't work
- - 'grep *foo file' segfaults
- - ps dirent race bug (need to stat the file before attempting chdir)
- - The following commands segfault:
- chmod -R
- chown -R
- chgrp -R
- cp -a -a
- ln -s -s
- rm -f
- rm -f -
- rm -- -
- touch -c
- - I believe that swaponoff may also be also broken (check it).
- - It used to be that BusyBox tar would happily overwrite existing files on
- an extraction. However, as of 0.42, BusyBox tar simply dies as soon as an
- existing file is found.
- - Make 'mount -a' work even when /proc isn't mounted (ugly bug).
- - 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).
- - implement 'ls -R'.
-
-
------------
-
-* 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)
-
-
------------------------
-
-Running the following:
-
- 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.
-
-(BTW, this is more informative if BB_FEATURE_NFSMOUNT is turned off...)
-
-Most wanted list:
-
- [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.
-
-To be replaced with a busybox local glob routine:
-
- [andersen@slag busybox]$ grep -l glob *.[ch]
- gunzip.c
- gzip.c
- sh.c
- tar.c
- telnet.c
-
-Can check_wildcard_match() from utility.c do this job?
-
-
------------------------
-
-Compile with debugging on, run 'nm --size-sort ./busybox'
-and then start with the biggest things and make them smaller...
-
------------------------
-
-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:
-
-/bin/busybox --install -s which makes all links to commands that it
- can support (an optionnal -s should be used for symbolic links instead
- of hard links).
-
------------------------
-
-
-> Have you ever thought of doig network logging in busybox syslogd ? It
-> would quite make sense on embedded systems... :)
-
-So far I had not considered it. Basically, you wish to have
-messages from the embedded box logged to a remote network
-syslog box, right? I can see that this would be useful.
-I'll add this to the TODO list,
-
-
------------------------
-
-
- 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
- another argv/. du.c probably ought to have an -x switch like GNU du
- does also...
-
-
-------------------------------------------------------------------
-
-
-Date: Fri, 25 Feb 2000 08:23:12 +0000 (GMT)
-From: Riley Williams <rhw@MemAlpha.CX>
-X-Sender: rhw@moo.cus.org.uk
-To: almesber@lrc.di.epfl.ch
-Cc: "Albert D. Cahalan" <acahalan@cs.uml.edu>,
- Linux Kernel <linux-kernel@vger.rutgers.edu>
-Subject: Re: What /proc should contain [was: /proc/driver/microcode]
-In-Reply-To: <20000224165245.A29790@lrc.di.epfl.ch>
-Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.21.0002250806220.8741-100000@moo.cus.org.uk>
-Sender: owner-linux-kernel@vger.rutgers.edu
-Precedence: bulk
-
-Hi there.
-
- >> Nope, most /proc access is does via programs written in C.
-
- > That varies a lot from file to file. E.g. I haven't seen any
- > programs that are specificly designed to read /proc/atm/* yet,
- > and I know of only one (fuser) that reads /proc/mounts,
- > extracting only partial information (just to pick two examples
- > that I'm quite familiar with).
-
-As a point of reference, here's a slightly tweaked analysis of the
-programs on the system I'm reading your mail on. Basically, I ran the
-following script...
-
- Q> #!/bin/bash
- Q> function use() {
- Q> for Z in $* ; do
- Q> strings $Z | grep /proc | sed "s=^=$Z ="
- Q> done
- Q> }
- Q> use /{,s}bin/* /usr/{,s}bin/* | sort -u | tee proc-usage
-
-...and then went through it removing comments and print format
-strings. Replace /proc with /dev and you'd soon have an equivalent
-list for that - although I can report that such is MUCH larger...
-
-There are three programs therein that refer to /proc/mounts ...
-
- /bin/mount
- /bin/umount
- /usr/bin/eject
-
-...and, as you stated, none that refer to /proc/atm on this system.
-However, as this is a RedHat Linux 5.0 based system, that's not
-necessarily an up to date reference thereto...
-
-Here's the list anyway...
-
-/bin/kill /proc/%d/cmdline
-/bin/kill /proc/%d/stat
-
-/bin/mount /proc/devices
-/bin/mount /proc/filesystems
-/bin/mount /proc/mounts
-
-/bin/netstat /proc/net
-/bin/netstat /proc/net/appletalk
-/bin/netstat /proc/net/ax25
-/bin/netstat /proc/net/ax25_route
-/bin/netstat /proc/net/dev
-/bin/netstat /proc/net/ip_masquerade
-/bin/netstat /proc/net/ipx
-/bin/netstat /proc/net/ipx_route
-/bin/netstat /proc/net/netstat
-/bin/netstat /proc/net/nr
-/bin/netstat /proc/net/nr_neigh
-/bin/netstat /proc/net/nr_nodes
-/bin/netstat /proc/net/raw
-/bin/netstat /proc/net/route
-/bin/netstat /proc/net/rt_cache
-/bin/netstat /proc/net/snmp
-/bin/netstat /proc/net/tcp
-/bin/netstat /proc/net/udp
-/bin/netstat /proc/net/unix
-
-/bin/umount /proc/devices
-/bin/umount /proc/mounts
-
-/sbin/arp /proc/net/appletalk
-/sbin/arp /proc/net/arp
-/sbin/arp /proc/net/ax25
-/sbin/arp /proc/net/ipx
-/sbin/arp /proc/net/nr
-/sbin/arp /proc/net/unix
-
-/sbin/cardctl /proc/devices
-
-/sbin/cardmgr /proc/devices
-
-/sbin/fdisk /proc/ide/%s/media
-/sbin/fdisk /proc/scsi/scsi
-
-/sbin/getty /proc/version
-
-/sbin/ifconfig /proc/net
-/sbin/ifconfig /proc/net/appletalk
-/sbin/ifconfig /proc/net/ax25
-/sbin/ifconfig /proc/net/dev
-/sbin/ifconfig /proc/net/ipx
-/sbin/ifconfig /proc/net/nr
-/sbin/ifconfig /proc/net/unix
-
-/sbin/ifup /proc/sys/kernel/modprobe
-
-/sbin/ipchains /proc/net/ip_fwchains
-/sbin/ipchains /proc/net/ip_fwnames
-/sbin/ipchains /proc/net/ip_masquerade
-/sbin/ipchains /proc/sys/net/ipv4/ip_forward
-
-/sbin/ipmaddr /proc/net/dev_mcast
-/sbin/ipmaddr /proc/net/igmp
-/sbin/ipmaddr /proc/net/igmp6
-
-/sbin/iptunnel /proc/net/dev
-
-/sbin/killall5 /proc/%s/cmdline
-/sbin/killall5 /proc/%s/exe
-/sbin/killall5 /proc/%s/stat
-/sbin/killall5 /proc/version
-
-/sbin/klogd /proc/kmsg
-
-/sbin/lsmod /proc/modules
-
-/sbin/modprobe /proc/modules
-
-/sbin/pidof /proc/%s/cmdline
-/sbin/pidof /proc/%s/exe
-/sbin/pidof /proc/%s/stat
-/sbin/pidof /proc/version
-
-/sbin/probe /proc/pci
-
-/sbin/rarp /proc/net/ax25
-/sbin/rarp /proc/net/nr
-/sbin/rarp /proc/net/rarp
-
-/sbin/rmmod /proc/modules
-
-/sbin/rmmod.static /proc/modules
-
-/sbin/route /proc/net/appletalk
-/sbin/route /proc/net/ax25
-/sbin/route /proc/net/ax25_route
-/sbin/route /proc/net/ipx
-/sbin/route /proc/net/ipx_route
-/sbin/route /proc/net/nr
-/sbin/route /proc/net/nr_neigh
-/sbin/route /proc/net/nr_nodes
-/sbin/route /proc/net/route
-/sbin/route /proc/net/rt_cache
-/sbin/route /proc/net/unix
-
-/sbin/scsi_info /proc/scsi
-/sbin/scsi_info /proc/scsi/%s
-/sbin/scsi_info /proc/scsi/scsi
-
-/sbin/slattach /proc/net/ax25
-/sbin/slattach /proc/net/nr
-
-/sbin/swapoff /proc/swaps
-
-/sbin/swapon /proc/swaps
-
-/sbin/uugetty /proc/version
-
-/usr/bin/dig /proc/
-/usr/bin/dig /proc/interrupts
-/usr/bin/dig /proc/meminfo
-/usr/bin/dig /proc/rtc
-/usr/bin/dig /proc/self/status
-/usr/bin/dig /proc/stat
-
-/usr/bin/dnsquery /proc/
-/usr/bin/dnsquery /proc/interrupts
-/usr/bin/dnsquery /proc/meminfo
-/usr/bin/dnsquery /proc/rtc
-/usr/bin/dnsquery /proc/self/status
-/usr/bin/dnsquery /proc/stat
-
-/usr/bin/eject /proc/mounts
-
-/usr/bin/emacs /proc/loadavg
-
-/usr/bin/fetchmail /proc/net/dev
-
-/usr/bin/free /proc/meminfo
-
-/usr/bin/gmake /proc/loadavg
-
-/usr/bin/gpm-root /proc/loadavg
-/usr/bin/gpm-root /proc/meminfo
-
-/usr/bin/host /proc/
-/usr/bin/host /proc/interrupts
-/usr/bin/host /proc/meminfo
-/usr/bin/host /proc/rtc
-/usr/bin/host /proc/self/status
-/usr/bin/host /proc/stat
-
-/usr/bin/hoststat /proc/loadavg
-
-/usr/bin/hwdiag /proc/cpuinfo
-/usr/bin/hwdiag /proc/pci
-/usr/bin/hwdiag /proc/scsi/scsi
-/usr/bin/hwdiag /proc/version
-
-/usr/bin/lsdev /proc/dma
-/usr/bin/lsdev /proc/interrupts
-/usr/bin/lsdev /proc/ioports
-
-/usr/bin/mailq /proc/loadavg
-
-/usr/bin/make /proc/loadavg
-
-/usr/bin/mcookie /proc/loadavg
-/usr/bin/mcookie /proc/stat
-
-/usr/bin/newaliases /proc/loadavg
-
-/usr/bin/nslookup /proc/
-/usr/bin/nslookup /proc/interrupts
-/usr/bin/nslookup /proc/meminfo
-/usr/bin/nslookup /proc/rtc
-/usr/bin/nslookup /proc/self/status
-/usr/bin/nslookup /proc/stat
-
-/usr/bin/nsupdate /proc/
-/usr/bin/nsupdate /proc/interrupts
-/usr/bin/nsupdate /proc/meminfo
-/usr/bin/nsupdate /proc/rtc
-/usr/bin/nsupdate /proc/self/status
-/usr/bin/nsupdate /proc/stat
-
-/usr/bin/pgp /proc/version
-/usr/bin/pgpe /proc/version
-/usr/bin/pgpk /proc/version
-/usr/bin/pgps /proc/version
-/usr/bin/pgpv /proc/version
-
-/usr/bin/procinfo /proc/cmdline
-/usr/bin/procinfo /proc/devices
-/usr/bin/procinfo /proc/dma
-/usr/bin/procinfo /proc/filesystems
-/usr/bin/procinfo /proc/interrupts
-/usr/bin/procinfo /proc/loadavg
-/usr/bin/procinfo /proc/meminfo
-/usr/bin/procinfo /proc/modules
-/usr/bin/procinfo /proc/stat
-/usr/bin/procinfo /proc/uptime
-/usr/bin/procinfo /proc/version
-
-/usr/bin/purgestat /proc/loadavg
-
-/usr/bin/screen /proc/loadavg
-
-/usr/bin/strace /proc/%d/stat
-
-/usr/bin/top /proc/cpuinfo
-/usr/bin/top /proc/meminfo
-/usr/bin/top /proc/stat
-
-/usr/bin/vmstat /proc/%s/stat
-/usr/bin/vmstat /proc/meminfo
-/usr/bin/vmstat /proc/stat
-
-/usr/sbin/atd /proc/loadavg
-
-/usr/sbin/dnskeygen /proc/
-/usr/sbin/dnskeygen /proc/interrupts
-/usr/sbin/dnskeygen /proc/meminfo
-/usr/sbin/dnskeygen /proc/rtc
-/usr/sbin/dnskeygen /proc/self/status
-/usr/sbin/dnskeygen /proc/stat
-
-/usr/sbin/fuser /proc/%d/stat
-/usr/sbin/fuser /proc/net/%s
-/usr/sbin/fuser /proc/net/unix
-
-/usr/sbin/in.identd /proc/net/tcp
-
-/usr/sbin/irpd /proc/
-/usr/sbin/irpd /proc/interrupts
-/usr/sbin/irpd /proc/meminfo
-/usr/sbin/irpd /proc/rtc
-/usr/sbin/irpd /proc/self/status
-/usr/sbin/irpd /proc/stat
-
-/usr/sbin/named /proc/
-/usr/sbin/named /proc/interrupts
-/usr/sbin/named /proc/meminfo
-/usr/sbin/named /proc/rtc
-/usr/sbin/named /proc/self/status
-/usr/sbin/named /proc/stat
-
-/usr/sbin/named-xfer /proc/
-/usr/sbin/named-xfer /proc/interrupts
-/usr/sbin/named-xfer /proc/meminfo
-/usr/sbin/named-xfer /proc/rtc
-/usr/sbin/named-xfer /proc/self/status
-/usr/sbin/named-xfer /proc/stat
-
-/usr/sbin/readprofile /proc/profile
-
-/usr/sbin/rwhod /proc/loadavg
-/usr/sbin/rwhod /proc/uptime
-
-/usr/sbin/sendmail /proc/loadavg
-
-/usr/sbin/setconsole /proc/openprom/options
-/usr/sbin/setconsole /proc/openprom/options/${console}-mode
-/usr/sbin/setconsole /proc/openprom/options/input-device
-/usr/sbin/setconsole /proc/openprom/options/output-device
-
-Best wishes from Riley.
-
- * Copyright (C) 1999, Memory Alpha Systems.
- * All rights and wrongs reserved.
-
-+----------------------------------------------------------------------+
-| There is something frustrating about the quality and speed of Linux |
-| development, ie., the quality is too high and the speed is too high, |
-| in other words, I can implement this XXXX feature, but I bet someone |
-| else has already done so and is just about to release their patch. |
-+----------------------------------------------------------------------+
- * http://www.memalpha.cx/Linux/Kernel/
-
-
--
-To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in
-the body of a message to majordomo@vger.rutgers.edu
-Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
-
+Busybox TODO
+
+Stuff that needs to be done
+
+tr - missing SuS3 features in busybox 1.0pre10
+
+tr doesnt support [:blank:], [:digit:] or other predefined classes, [=equiv=]
+support is also missing.
+----
+find
+ doesn't understand () or -exec, and these are actually used out in the real
+ world. The "make uninstall" of lots of things (including busybox itself)
+ breaks because of this, and sometimes even "make install" (like udev).
+----
+sh
+ The command shell situation is a big mess. We have three or four 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. Unifying the various shells and figuring out a configurable
+ way of adding the minimal set of bash features a given script uses is a big
+ job, but it be a big improvement.
+
+ Note: Rob Landley (rob@landley.net) is working on this one, but very slowly...
+---
+gzip
+ Can't handle compressing multiple files at once. (I don't mean making a
+ multiple file archive, I mean compressing more than one file at a time.)
+ Some global variables aren't re-initialized between runs.
+---
+gunzip
+ same problem as gzip. "gunzip one.gz two.gz three.gz" doesn't work for
+ two.gz and three.gz due to global variables not getting reset.
+---
+diff
+ We should have a diff -u command. We have patch, we should have diff
+ (we only need to support unified diffs though).
+---
+fuser
+ Would be nice. The basic susv3 options, plus fuser -k.
+---
+patch
+ should have simple fuzz factor support to apply patches at an offset which
+ shouldn't take up too much space.
+---
+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/zcatbzcat | more
+---
+bzip2
+ Compression-side support.
+
+
+Architectural issues:
+
+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
+ figure out which of our apps are compliant, and what we're missing that
+ we might actually care about.
+
+ Even better would be some kind of automated compliance test harness that
+ exercises each command line option and the various corner cases.
+--
+Unify archivers
+ Lots of archivers have the same general infrastructure. The directory
+ traversal code should be factored out, and the guts of each archiver could
+ be some setup code and a series of callbacks for "add this file",
+ "add this directory", "add this symlink" and so on.
+
+ This could clean up tar and zip, and make it cheaper to add cpio and ar
+ write support, and possibly even cheaply add things like mkisofs someday,
+ if it becomes relevant.
+---
+Text buffer support.
+ Several existing applets and potential additions (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...
+---
+Individual compilation of applets.
+ It would be nice if busybox had the option to compile to individual applets,
+ for people who want an alternate implementation less bloated than the gnu
+ utils (or simply with less political baggage), but without it being one big
+ executable.
+
+ Turning libbb into a real dll is another possibility, especially if libbb
+ could export some of the other library interfaces we've already more or less
+ got the code for (like zlib).
+---
+buildroot - Make a "dogfood" option
+ Busybox is now capable of replacing most gnu packages for real world use,
+ such as developing software or in a live CD. A system built from busybox
+ (1.00 with updated sort.c), uclibc 0.9.27, gcc, binutils, make, and a few
+ other development tools (http://www.landley.net/code/firmware has an example
+ system using autoconf, automake, bison, flex, libtools, m4, zlib,
+ and groff: dunno what subset of that is actually necessary) is capable of
+ rebuilding itself, from scratch, under itself.
+
+ It would be a good "eating our own dogfood" test if buildroot had the option
+ of using busybox instead of bzip2, coreutils, file, findutils, gawk, grep,
+ inetutils, modutils, net-tools, procps, sed, shadow, sysklogd, sysvinit, tar,
+ util-linux, and vim. Anything that's wrong with the resulting system, we
+ can fix. (It would be nice to be able to upgrade busybox to be able to
+ replace bash, diffutils, gzip, less, and patch as well.)
+---
+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.
+
+ 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
+ free for an alloca()), and this means that various cleanup loops that just
+ call free might also be optimized out by the compiler if written right, so
+ we can yank those #ifdefs too, and generally clean up the code.
+---
+Switch CONFIG_SYMBOLS to ENABLE_SYMBOLS
+
+ In busybox 1.0 and earlier, configuration was done by CONFIG_SYMBOLS
+ that were either defined or undefined to indicate whether the symbol was
+ selected in the .config file. They were used with #ifdefs, ala:
+
+ #ifdef CONFIG_SYMBOL
+ if (other_test) {
+ do_code();
+ }
+ #endif
+
+ In 1.1, we have new ENABLE_SYMBOLS which are always defined (as 0 or 1),
+ meaning you can still use them for preprocessor tests by replacing
+ "#ifdef CONFIG_SYMBOL" with "#if ENABLE_SYMBOL". But more importantly, we
+ can use them as a true or false test in normal C code:
+
+ if (ENABLE_SYMBOL && other_test) {
+ do_code();
+ }
+
+ (Optimizing away if() statements that resolve to a constant value
+ is known as "dead code elimination", an optimization so old and simple that
+ Turbo Pascal for DOS did it twenty years ago. Even modern mini-compilers
+ like the Tiny C Compiler (tcc) and the Small Device C Compiler (SDCC)
+ perform dead code elimination.)
+
+ Right now, busybox.h is #including both "config.h" (defining the
+ CONFIG_SYMBOLS) and "bb_config.h" (defining the ENABLE_SYMBOLS). At some
+ point in the future, it would be nice to wean ourselves off of the
+ CONFIG versions. (Among other things, some defective build environments
+ leak the Linux kernel's CONFIG_SYMBOLS into the system's standard #include
+ files. We've experienced collisions before.)
+---
+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
+ 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.
+
+ The idea was raised that we could simulate fork/exit with setjmp/longjmp
+ for _really_ brainless embedded systems, or speed up the standalone shell
+ by not forking. Doing so would require a reliable FEATURE_CLEAN_UP.
+ Unfortunately, this isn't as easy as it sounds.
+
+ The problem is, lots of things exit(), sometimes unexpectedly (xmalloc())
+ and sometimes reliably (bb_perror_msg_and_die() or show_usage()). This
+ 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()
+ 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.
+ You don't want to free the shell's own resources.)
+
+ Right now, FEATURE_CLEAN_UP is more or less a debugging aid, to make things
+ like valgrind happy. It's also documentation of _what_ we're trusting
+ exit() to clean up for us. But new infrastructure to auto-free stuff would
+ render the existing FEATURE_CLEAN_UP code redundant.
+
+ For right now, exit() handles it just fine.
projects / oweals / busybox.git / blobdiff