1<html><head><title>toybox roadmap</title> 2<!--#include file="header.html" --> 3<title>Toybox Roadmap</title> 4 5<h2>Roadmap sections</h2> 6 7<ul> 8<li><a href=#goals>Introduction</a></li> 9<li><a href=#susv4>POSIX-2008/SUSv4</a></li> 10<li><a href=#sigh>Linux "Standard" Base</a></li> 11<li><a href=#rfc>IETF RFCs and Man Pages</a></li> 12<li><a href=#dev_env>Development Environment</a></li> 13<li><a href=#android>Android Toolbox</a></li> 14<li><a href=#aosp>Building AOSP</a></li> 15<li><a href=#tizen>Tizen Core</a></li> 16<li><a href=#yocto>Yocto</a></li> 17<li><a href=#fhs>Filesystem Hierachy Standard</a></li> 18<li><a href=#buildroot>buildroot</a></li> 19<li>Miscelaneous: <a href=#klibc>klibc</a>, <a href=#glibc>glibc</a>, 20<a href=#sash>sash</a>, <a href=#sbase>sbase</a>, 21<a href=#uclinux>uclinux</a>...</li> 22<li><a href=#packages>Other Packages</a></li> 23</ul> 24 25<a name="goals" /> 26<h2>Introduction (Goals and use cases)</h2> 27 28<p>We have several potential use cases for a new set of command line 29utilities, and are using those to determine which commands to implement 30for Toybox's 1.0 release. Most of these have their own section in the 31<a href=status.html>status page</a>, showing current progress towards 32commplation.</p> 33 34<p>The most interesting publicly available standards are A) POSIX-2008 (also 35known as SUSv4), B) the Linux Standard Base version 4.1, and C) the official 36<a href=https://www.kernel.org/doc/man-pages/>Linux man pages</a>. 37But they include commands we've decided not implement, exclude 38commands or features we have, and don't always entirely match reality.</p> 39 40<p>The most thorough real world test (other than a large interactive 41userbase) is using toybox as the command line in a build system such as 42<a href=https://landley.net/aboriginal/about.html>Aboriginal 43Linux</a>, having it rebuild itself from source code, and using the result 44to <a href=https://github.com/landley/control-images>build Linux From Scratch</a>. 45The current "minimal native development system" goal is to use 46<a href=faq.html#mkroot>mkroot</a> 47plus <a href=faq.html#cross>musl-cross-make</a> to hermetically build 48<a href=https://source.android.com>AOSP</a>.</p> 49 50<p>We've also checked what commands were provided by similar projects 51(klibc, sash, sbase, embutils, 52nash, and beastiebox), looked at various vendor configurations of busybox, 53and collected end user requests.</p> 54 55<p>Finally, we'd like to provide a good replacement for the Bash shell, 56which was the first program Linux ever ran and remains the standard shell 57of Linux (no matter what Ubuntu says). This doesn't necessarily mean including 58every last Bash 5.x feature, but does involve {various,features} <(beyond) 59posix.</p> 60 61<p>See the <a href=status.html>status page</a> for the categorized command list 62and progress towards implementing it. There's also a 63<a href=todo.html>historical todo list</a> from the project's 2011 relaunch.</p> 64 65<hr /> 66<a name="standards"> 67<h2>Use case: standards compliance.</h2> 68 69<h3><a name=susv4 /><a href="#susv4">POSIX-2008/SUSv4</a></h3> 70<p>The best standards describe reality rather than attempting to impose a 71new one. A good standard should document, not legislate. 72Standards which document existing reality tend to be approved by 73more than one standards body, such ANSI and ISO both approving <a href=https://landley.net/c99-draft.html>C99</a>. That's why IEEE 1003.1-2008, 74the Single Unix Specification version 4, and the Open Group Base Specification 75edition 7 are all the same standard from three sources, but most people just 76call it "posix" (portable operating system derived from unix). 77It's available <a href=https://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9699919799>online in full</a>, and may be downloaded as a tarball. 78Previous versions (<a href=https://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/009695399/>SUSv3</a> and 79<a href=https://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/7990989775/>SUSv2</a>) 80are also available. 81(Note: 82<a href=https://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9699919799.2008edition/>Posix 832008</a> was reissued in 2013 and 2018, the first was minor wordsmithing 84with no behavioral changes, the second was to renew a ten year timeout 85to still be considered a "current standard" by some government regulations. 86It's still posix-2008/SUSv4/issue 7.)</p> 87 88<h3>Why not just use posix for everything?</h3> 89 90<p>Unfortunately, Posix describes an incomplete subset of reality, because 91it was designed to. It started with proprietary unix vendors collaborating to 92describe the functionality their fragmented APIs could agree on, which was then 93incorporated into <a href=https://nvlpubs.nist.gov/nistpubs/Legacy/FIPS/fipspub151-2-1993.pdf>US federal procurement standards</a> 94as a <a href=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nwrTTXOg-KI>compliance requirement</a> 95for things like navy contracts, giving large corporations 96like IBM and Microsoft millions of dollars of incentive 97to punch holes in the standard big enough to drive 98<a href=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_POSIX_subsystem>Windows NT</a> and 99<a href=http://www.naspa.net/magazine/1996/May/T9605006.PDF>OS/360</a> through. 100When open source projects like Linux started developing on the internet 101(enabled by the 1993 relaxation of the National Science Foundation's 102"Acceptable Use Policy" allowing everyone to connect to the internet, 103previously restricted to approved government/military/university organizations), 104Posix <a href=http://www.opengroup.org/testing/fips/policy_info.html>ignored 105the upstarts</a> and Linux eventually 106<a href=https://www.linuxjournal.com/article/3417>returned the favor</a>, 107leaving Posix behind.</p> 108 109<p>The result is a "standard" that lacks any mention of commands like 110"init" or "mount" required to actually boot a system. 111It describes logname but not login. It provides ipcrm 112and ipcs, but not ipcmk, so you can use System V IPC resources but not create 113them. And widely used real-world commands such as tar and cpio (the basis 114of initramfs and RPM) which were present in earlier 115versions of the standard have been removed, while obsolete commands like 116cksum, compress, sccs and uucp remain with no mention of modern counterparts 117like crc32/sha1sum, gzip/xz, svn/git or scp/rsync. Meanwhile posix' description 118of the commands 119themselves are missing dozens of features and specify silly things like ebcdic 120support in dd or that wc should use %d (not %lld) for byte counts. So 121we have to extensively filter posix to get a useful set of recommendations.</p> 122 123<h3>Analysis</h3> 124 125<p>Starting with the 126<a href="http://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9699919799.2008edition/idx/utilities.html">full "utilities" list</a>, 127we first remove generally obsolete 128commands (compress ed ex pr uncompress uccp uustat uux), commands for the 129pre-CVS "SCCS" source control system (admin delta get prs rmdel sact sccs unget 130val what), fortran support (asa fort77), and batch processing support (batch 131qalter qdel qhold qmove qmsg qrerun qrls qselect qsig qstat qsub).</p> 132 133<p>Some commands are for a compiler toolchain (ar c99 cflow ctags cxref gencat 134iconv lex m4 make nm strings strip tsort yacc) which is outside of toybox's 135mandate and should be supplied externally. (Some of these may be 136revisited later, but not for toybox 1.0.)</p> 137 138<p>Some commands are part of a command shell, and can't be implemented as 139separate executables (alias bg cd command fc fg getopts hash jobs kill read 140type ulimit umask unalias wait). These may be implemented as part of the 141built-in toybox shell, but are not exported into $PATH via symlinks and 142thus are not part of toybox's main command list. (If you fork a 143child process and have it "cd" then exit, you've accomplished nothing.) 144Again, what posix provides is incomplete: a shell also needs exit, if, while, 145for, case, export, set, unset, trap, exec... (And for bash compatibility 146function, source, declare...)</p> 147 148<p>A few other commands are judgement calls, providing command-line 149internationalization support (iconv locale localedef), System V inter-process 150communication (ipcrm ipcs), and cross-tty communication from the minicomputer 151days (talk mesg write). The "pax" utility <a href=https://slashdot.org/story/06/09/04/1335226/debian-kicks-jrg-schilling>failed</a> to replace tar, 152"mailx" is 153a command line email client, and "lp" submits files for printing to... what 154exactly? (cups?) The standard defines crontab but not crond. What is 155pathchk supposed to be portable _to_? (Linux accepts 255 byte path components 156with any char except NUL or / and no max length on the total path, and 157<a href=https://yarchive.net/comp/linux/utf8.html>EXPLICITLY</a> 158doesn't care if it's an invalid utf8 sequence.)</p> 159 160<p>Removing all of that leaves the following commands, which toybox should 161implement:</p> 162 163<blockquote><b> 164<span id=posix> 165at awk basename bc cal cat chgrp chmod chown cksum cmp comm cp 166csplit cut date dd df diff dirname du echo env expand expr false file find 167fold fuser getconf grep head id join kill link ln logger logname ls man 168mkdir mkfifo more mv newgrp nice nl nohup od paste patch printf ps 169pwd renice rm rmdir sed sh sleep sort split stty tabs tail tee test time 170touch tput tr true tty uname unexpand uniq unlink uudecode uuencode vi wc 171who xargs zcat 172</span> 173</b></blockquote> 174 175<h3><a name=sigh /><a href="#sigh">Linux Standard Base</a></h3> 176 177<p>One attempt to supplement POSIX towards an actual usable system was the 178Linux Standard Base. Unfortunately, the quality of this "standard" is 179fairly low, largely due to the Free Standards Group that maintained it 180being consumed by <a href=https://landley.net/notes-2010.html#18-07-2010>the Linux Foundation</a> in 2007.</p> 181 182<p>Where POSIX allowed its standards process to be compromised 183by leaving things out (but what 184they DID standardize tends to be respected, if sometimes obsolete), 185the Linux Standard Base's failure mode is different. They respond to 186pressure by including anything their members pay them enough to promote, 187such as allowing Red Hat to push 188RPM into the standard even though all sorts of distros (Debian, Slackware, Arch, 189Gentoo, Android) don't use it and never will. This means anything in the LSB is 190at best a suggestion: arbitrary portions of this standard are widely 191ignored.</p> 192 193<p>The <a href=https://mjg59.dreamwidth.org/39546.html>community perception</a> 194seems to be that the Linux Standard Base is 195the best standard money can buy: the Linux Foundation is supported by 196financial donations from large companies and the LSB 197<a href=https://www.softwarefreedom.org/blog/2016/apr/11/lf/>represents the interests 198of those donors</a> regardless of technical merit. (The Linux Foundation, which 199maintains the LSB, is NOT a 501c3. It's a 501c6, the 200same kind of legal entity as the Tobacco Institute and 201<a href=https://lwn.net/Articles/706585/>Microsoft's</a> 202old "<a href=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don%27t_Copy_That_Floppy>Don't Copy That Floppy</a>" program.) Debian officially 203<a href=http://lwn.net/Articles/658809>washed its hands of LSB</a> by 204refusing to adopt release 5.0 in 2015, and no longer even pretends to support 205it (which affects Debian derivatives like Ubuntu and Knoppix). Toybox has 206stayed on 4.1 for similar reasons: a lot of historical effort went into 207producing the standard before the Linux Foundation took over.</p> 208 209<p>That said, Posix by itself isn't enough, and this is the next most 210comprehensive standards effort for Linux so far, so we salvage what we can.</p> 211 212<h3>Analysis</h3> 213 214<p>The LSB specifies a <a href=http://refspecs.linuxfoundation.org/LSB_4.1.0/LSB-Core-generic/LSB-Core-generic/cmdbehav.html>list of command line 215utilities</a>:</p> 216 217<blockquote><b> 218ar at awk batch bc chfn chsh col cpio crontab df dmesg du echo egrep 219fgrep file fuser gettext grep groupadd groupdel groupmod groups 220gunzip gzip hostname install install_initd ipcrm ipcs killall lpr ls 221lsb_release m4 md5sum mknod mktemp more mount msgfmt newgrp od passwd 222patch pidof remove_initd renice sed sendmail seq sh shutdown su sync 223tar umount useradd userdel usermod xargs zcat 224</b></blockquote> 225 226<p>Where posix specifies one of those commands, LSB's deltas tend to be 227accomodations for broken tool versions which aren't up to date with the 228standard yet. (See <a href=http://refspecs.linuxfoundation.org/LSB_4.1.0/LSB-Core-generic/LSB-Core-generic/more.html>more</a> and <a href=http://refspecs.linuxfoundation.org/LSB_4.1.0/LSB-Core-generic/LSB-Core-generic/xargs.html>xargs</a> 229for examples.)</p> 230 231<p>Since we've already committed to using our own judgement to skip bits of 232POSIX, and LSB's "judgement" in this regard is purely bug workarounds to declare 233various legacy tool implementations "compliant", this means we're mostly 234interested in the set of LSB tools that aren't mentioned in posix.</p> 235 236<p>Of these, gettext and msgfmt are internationalization, install_initd and 237remove_initd weren't present in Ubuntu 10.04, lpr is out of scope, 238lsb_release just reports information in /etc/os-release, and sendmail's 239turned into a pile of cryptographic verification and DNS shenanigans due 240to spammers.</p> 241 242<p>This leaves:</p> 243 244<blockquote><b> 245<span id=lsb> 246chfn chsh dmesg egrep fgrep groupadd groupdel groupmod groups 247gunzip gzip hostname install killall md5sum 248mknod mktemp mount passwd pidof seq shutdown 249su sync tar umount useradd userdel usermod zcat 250</span> 251</b></blockquote> 252 253<h3><a name=rfc /><a href="#rfc">IETF RFCs and Man Pages</a></h3> 254 255<p>They're very nice, but there's thousands of them.</p> 256 257<p>Discussion of standards wouldn't be complete without the Internet 258Engineering Task Force's "<a href=https://www.rfc-editor.org/in-notes/rfc-index.txt>Request For Comments</a>" collection and Michael Kerrisk's 259<a href=https://www.kernel.org/doc/man-pages/>Linux man-pages project</a>. 260Except these aren't standards, they're collections of documentation with 261low barriers to inclusion. They're not saying "you should support 262X", they're saying "if you do, here's how". 263Thus neither really helps us select which commands to include.</p> 264 265<p>The man pages website includes the commands in git, yum, perf, postgres, 266flatpack... Great for examining the features of a command you've 267already decided to include, useless for deciding _what_ to include.</p> 268 269<p>The RFCs are more about protocols than commands. The noise level is 270extremely high: there's thousands of RFCs, many describing a proposed idea 271that never took off, and less than 1% of the resulting documents are 272currently relevant to toybox. And the documents are numbered based on the 273order they were received, with no real attempt at coherently indexing 274the result. As with man pages they can be <a href=https://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc0610.txt>long and complicated</a> or 275<a href=https://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc1951.txt>terse and impenetrable</a>, 276have developed a certain amount of <a href=https://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc8179.txt>bureaucracy</a> over the years, and often the easiest way to understand what 277they <a href=https://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc4330.txt>document</a> is to find an <a href=https://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc1769.txt>earlier version</a> to read first.</p> 278 279<p>That said, RFC documents can be useful (especially for networking protocols) 280and the four URL templates the recommended starting files 281for new commands (toys/example/skeleton.c or toys/example/hello.c depending on how much 282plumbing you want to start with) provide point to posix, lsb, man, and 283rfc pages.</p> 284 285<hr /> 286<a name="dev_env"> 287<h2><a href="#dev_env">Use case: provide a self-hosting development environment</a></h2> 288 289<p>The following commands were enough to build the <a href=http://landley.net/aboriginal/about.html>Aboriginal Linux</a> development 290environment, boot it to a shell prompt, and build <a href=http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/lfs/view/6.8/>Linux From Scratch 6.8</a> under it.</p> 291 292<blockquote><b> 293<span id=development> 294bzcat cat cp dirname echo env patch rmdir sha1sum sleep sort sync 295true uname wc which yes zcat 296awk basename chmod chown cmp cut date dd diff 297egrep expr fdisk find grep gzip head hostname id install ln ls 298mkdir mktemp mv od readlink rm sed sh tail tar touch tr uniq 299wget whoami xargs chgrp comm gunzip less logname split 300tee test time bunzip2 chgrp chroot comm cpio dmesg 301dnsdomainname ftpget ftpput gunzip ifconfig init less 302logname losetup mdev mount mountpoint nc pgrep pkill 303pwd route split stat switch_root tac umount vi 304resize2fs tune2fs fsck.ext2 genext2fs mke2fs xzcat 305</span> 306</b></blockquote> 307 308<p>This use case includes running init scripts and other shell scripts, running 309configure, make, and install in each package, and providing basic command line 310facilities such as a text editor. (It does not include a compiler toolchain or 311C library, those are outside the scope of the toybox project, although mkroot 312has a <a href=https://landley.net/code/qcc>potentialy follow-up project</a>. 313For now we use distro toolchains, 314<a href=https://github.com/richfelker/musl-cross-make>musl-cross-make</a>, 315and the Android NDK for build testing.) 316That build system also instaled bash 2.05b as #!/bin/sh and its scripts 317required bash extensions not present in shells such as busybox ash. 318To replace that toysh needs to supply several bash extensions _and_ work 319when called under the name "bash".</p> 320 321<p>The above command list was collected using a command line recording wrapper, 322see scripts/record-commands and toys/example/logpath.c, which 323scripts/mkroot.sh uses to populate root/log/*-commands.txt. Try 324<b>awk '{print $1}' root/build/log/*-commands.txt | sort -u | grep -v musl | xargs</b> 325after building a mkroot target to get a similar command list used by that 326build.</p> 327 328<h3>Stages and moving targets</h3> 329 330<p>The development environment use case has two stages, achieving: 3311) a bootable system that can rebuild itself from source, and 2) 332a build environment capable 333of bootstrapping up to arbitrary complexity (by building 334Linux From Scratch and Beyond Linux From Scratch under the resulting 335system, or the Android Open Source Project). To accomplish just the first 336goal (a minimal system that can rebuild _itself_ from source), the old 337build still needs the following busybox commands for which toybox does 338not yet supply adequate replacements:</p> 339 340<blockquote><b> 341awk dd diff expr fdisk gzip less route sh tr unxz vi xzcat 342</b></blockquote> 343 344<p>All of those except awk and less have partial implementations 345in "pending".</p> 346 347<p>In 2017 Aboriginal Linux development ended, replaced by a much simpler 348project ("mkroot") designed to use an existing cross+native toolchain (such as 349<a href=https://github.com/richfelker/musl-cross-make>musl-cross-make</a> 350or the Android NDK) instead of building its own cross and native compilers 351from source. In 2019 the still-incomplete 352mkroot was merged into toybox as the "make root" target (which runs 353scripts/mkroot.sh). This is intended 354as a simpler way of providing essentially the same build environment, and doesn't 355significantly affect the rest of this analysis (although the "rebuild itself 356from source" test should now include building musl-cross-make under either 357mkroot or toybox's "make airlock" host environment).</p> 358 359<p>Building Linux From Scratch is not the same as building the 360<a href=https://source.android.com>Android Open Source Project</a>, 361but after toybox 1.0 we plan to try 362<a href=http://landley.net/aboriginal/about.html#hairball>modifying the AOSP build</a> 363to reduce dependencies. (It's fairly likely we'll have to add at least 364a read-only git utility so repo can download the build's source code, 365but that's actually <a href=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I-lGyn3PHP4>not 366that hard</a>. We'll probably also need our own "make" at some point after 3671.0, which is its own moving target thanks to cmake and ninja and so on.) 368The ongoing Android <a href=http://lists.landley.net/pipermail/toybox-landley.net/2018-January/009330.html>hermetic build</a> work is already advancing 369this goal.</p> 370 371<hr /> 372<h2><a name=android /><a href="#android">Use case: Replacing Android Toolbox</a></h2> 373 374<p>Android has a policy against GPL in userspace, so even though BusyBox 375predates Android by many years, they couldn't use it. Instead they grabbed 376an old version of ash (later replaced by 377<a href="https://www.mirbsd.org/mksh.htm">mksh</a>) 378and implemented their own command line utility set 379called "toolbox" (which toybox has already mostly replaced).</p> 380 381<p>Toolbox doesn't have its own repository, instead it's part of Android's 382<a href=https://android.googlesource.com/platform/system/core>system/core 383git repository</a>. Android's Native Development Kit (their standalone 384downloadable toolchain) has its own 385<a href=https://android.googlesource.com/platform/ndk/+/master/docs/Roadmap.md>roadmap</a>, and each version has 386<a href=https://developer.android.com/ndk/downloads/revision_history>release 387notes</a>.</p> 388 389<h3>Toolbox commands:</h3> 390 391<p>According to <a href=https://android.googlesource.com/platform/system/core/+/master/toolbox/Android.bp> 392system/core/toolbox/Android.bp</a> the toolbox directory builds the 393following commands:</p> 394 395<blockquote><b> 396getevent getprop modprobe setprop start 397</b></blockquote> 398 399<p>getprop/setprop/start were in toybox and moved back because they're so 400tied to non-public system interfaces. modprobe shares the implementation 401used in init. getevent is a board bringup tool built with a python script 402that pulls all the constants from the latest kernel headers.</p> 403 404<h3>Other Android /system/bin commands</h3> 405 406<p>Other than the toolbox links, the currently interesting 407binaries in /system/bin are:</p> 408 409<ul> 410<li><b>arping</b> - ARP REQUEST tool (iputils)</li> 411<li><b>blkid</b> - identify block devices (e2fsprogs)</li> 412<li><b>e2fsck</b> - fsck for ext2/ext3/ext4 (e2fsprogs)</li> 413<li><b>fsck.f2fs</b> - fsck for f2fs (f2fs-tools)</li> 414<li><b>fsck_msdos</b> - fsck for FAT (BSD)</li> 415<li><b>gzip</b> - compression/decompression tool (zlib)</li> 416<li><b>ip</b> - network routing tool (iproute2)</li> 417<li><b>iptables/ip6tables</b> - IPv4/IPv6 NAT admin (iptables)</li> 418<li><b>iw</b> - wireless device config tool (iw)</li> 419<li><b>logwrapper</b> - redirect stdio to android log (Android)</li> 420<li><b>make_ext4fs</b> - make ext4 fs (Android)</li> 421<li><b>make_f2fs</b> - make f2fs fs (f2fs-tools)</li> 422<li><b>ping/ping6</b> - ICMP ECHO_REQUEST tool (iputils)</li> 423<li><b>reboot</b> - reboot (Android)</li> 424<li><b>resize2fs</b> - resize ext2/ext3/ext4 fs (e2fsprogs)</li> 425<li><b>sh</b> - mksh (BSD)</li> 426<li><b>ss</b> - socket statistics (iproute2)</li> 427<li><b>tc</b> - traffic control (iproute2)</li> 428<li><b>tracepath/tracepath6</b> - trace network path (iputils)</li> 429<li><b>traceroute/traceroute6</b> - trace network route (iputils)</li> 430</ul> 431 432<p>The names in parentheses are the upstream source of the command.</p> 433 434<h3>Analysis</h3> 435 436<p>For reference, combining everything listed above that's still "fair game" 437for toybox, we get:</p> 438 439<blockquote><b> 440arping blkid e2fsck dd fsck.f2fs fsck_msdos gzip ip iptables 441ip6tables iw logwrapper make_ext4fs make_f2fs modpobe newfs_msdos ping ping6 442reboot resize2fs sh ss tc tracepath tracepath6 traceroute traceroute6 443</b></blockquote> 444 445<p>We may eventually implement all of that, but for toybox 1.0 we need to 446focus a bit. If Android has an acceptable external package, and the command 447isn't needed for system bootstrapping, replacing the external package is 448not a priority.</p> 449 450<p>However, several commands toybox plans to implement anyway could potentially 451replace existing Android versions, so we should take into account Android's use 452cases when doing so. This includes:</p> 453<blockquote><b> 454<span id=toolbox> 455dd getevent gzip modprobe newfs_msdos sh 456</span> 457</b></blockquote> 458 459<p>Update: <a href=https://android.googlesource.com/platform/system/core/+/master/system/core/Android.bp> 460external/toybox/Android.bp</a> has symlinks for the following toys out 461of "pending". (The toybox modprobe is also built for the device, but 462it isn't actually used and is only there for sanity checking against 463the libmodprobe-based implementation.) These should be a priority for 464cleanup:</p> 465 466<blockquote><b> 467bc dd diff expr getfattr lsof more stty tr traceroute 468</b></blockquote> 469 470<p>Android wishlist:</p> 471 472<blockquote><b> 473mtools genvfatfs mke2fs gene2fs 474</b></blockquote> 475 476<hr /> 477<h2><a name=aosp /><a href="#aosp">Use case: Building AOSP</a></h2> 478 479<p>The list of external tools used to build AOSP was 480<a href="https://android.googlesource.com/platform/build/soong/+/master/ui/build/paths/config.go">here</a>, 481but as they're switched over to toybox they disappear and reappear 482<a href="https://android.googlesource.com/platform/prebuilts/build-tools/+/refs/heads/master/path/linux-x86/">here</a>.</p> 483 484<blockquote><b> 485awk basename bash bc bzip2 cat chmod cmp comm cp cut date dd diff dirname du 486echo egrep env expr find fuser getconf getopt git grep gzip head hexdump 487hostname id jar java javap ln ls lsof m4 make md5sum mkdir mktemp mv od openssl 488paste patch pgrep pkill ps pstree pwd python python2.7 python3 readlink 489realpath rm rmdir rsync sed setsid sh sha1sum sha256sum sha512sum 490sleep sort stat tar tail tee todos touch tr true uname uniq unix2dos unzip 491wc which whoami xargs xxd xz zip zipinfo 492</b></blockquote> 493 494<p>The following are already in the tree and will be used directly:</p> 495 496<blockquote><b> 497awk bzip2 jar java javap m4 make python python2.7 python3 xz 498</b></blockquote> 499 500<p>Subtracting what's already in toybox (including the following toybox toys 501that are still in pending: <code>bc dd diff expr gzip lsof tar tr</code>), 502that leaves:</p> 503 504<blockquote><b> 505bash fuser getopt git hexdump openssl pstree rsync sh todos unzip zip zipinfo 506</b></blockquote> 507 508<p>For AOSP, zip/zipinfo/unzip are likely to be libziparchive based. The 509todos callers will use unix2dos instead if it's available. git/openssl 510seem like they should just be brought in to the tree. rsync is used to 511work around a Mac <code>cp -Rf</code> bug with broken symbolic links. That 512leaves:</p> 513 514<blockquote><b> 515bash fuser getopt hexdump pstree 516</b></blockquote> 517 518<p>(Why are fuser and pstree used during the AOSP build? They're used for 519diagnostics if something goes wrong. So it's really just bash, getopt, 520and hexdump that are actually used to build.)</p> 521 522<hr /> 523<h2><a name=tizen /><a href="#tizen">Use case: Tizen Core</a></h2> 524 525<p>A side effect of the Linux Foundation following the money to the 526exclusion of all else is they "support" their donors' myriad often 527contradictory pet projects with elaborate announcements and press releases. 528Long ago when Nokia's Maemo merged 529with Intel's Moblin to form <a href=https://www.linuxfoundation.org/press-release/linux-foundation-to-host-meego-project/>MeeGo</a>, there were believable <a href=https://www.linuxfoundation.org/press-release/public-support-for-the-meego-project/>statements</a> 530about unifying fragmented vendor efforts. Then MeeGo merged with 531<a href=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LiMo_Foundation>LiMo</a> to 532<a href=notes-2012.html#16-05-2012>form Tizen</a>, 533which became a Samsung-only project (that <a href=https://www.androidheadlines.com/2021/05/samsung-tvs-continue-use-tizen-os.html>still ships</a> 534inside <a href=https://twitter.com/cstross/status/1453747613686288385>televisions</a>, 535but was otherwise subsumed into <a href=https://www.theverge.com/2021/5/18/22440483/samsung-smartwatch-google-wearos-tizen-watch>Android GO</a>).</p> 536 537<p>Along the way, the Tizen project expressed a desire to eliminate GPLv3 software 538from its core system, and in installing toybox as 539<a href=https://wiki.tizen.org/wiki/Toybox>part of this process</a>.</p> 540 541<p>They had a fairly long list of new commands they wanted to see in toybox:</p> 542 543<blockquote><b> 544<span id=tizen_cmd> 545arch base64 users unexpand shred join csplit 546hostid nproc runcon sha224sum sha256sum sha384sum sha512sum sha3sum mkfs.vfat fsck.vfat 547dosfslabel uname pinky diff3 sdiff zcmp zdiff zegrep zfgrep zless zmore 548</span> 549</b></blockquote> 550 551<p>In addition, they wanted to use several commands then in pending:</p> 552 553<blockquote><b> 554<span id=tizen> 555tar diff printf wget rsync fdisk vi less tr test stty fold expr dd 556</span> 557</b></blockquote> 558 559<p>Also, tizen uses a different Linux Security Module called SMACK, so 560many of the SELinux options ala ls -Z needed smack alternatives in an 561if/else setup. We added lib/lsm.h to abstract this, but haven't heard 562from Tizen in years and have started implementing SELinux support without 563Smack support in places like tar.c. At some point, lib/lsm.h may go away 564due to lack of expressed interest.</p> 565 566<hr /> 567<h2><a name=yocto /><a href="#yocto">Use case: Yocto</a></h2> 568 569<p>Another project the Linux Foundation is paid to appreciate is Yocto, 570which was designed to fix the ongoing proprietary fragmentation problem 571(now in Linux build systems instead of vendor unix forks) by being the 572build system equivalent of a glue trap. While proclaiming that having the 573"minimum level of standardization" contributes to a "strong ecosystem", 574Yocto uses a "<a href=https://www.yoctoproject.org/software-overview/layers/>layered</a>" 575design where everybody who touches it is encouraged to add more and more layers 576of metadata on top of what came before, until they wind up <a href=https://github.com/varigit/variscite-bsp-platform>using repo</a> just to manage 577the layers (let alone their contents). But -- and this is the 578important bit -- all these dispirate forks are called "yocto" and built on 579top of giant piles of code the Linux Foundation can take credit for 580since they filed the serial numbers off OpenEmbedded. (And THEN users 581are encouraged to check the result into their own repository as one 582big initial commit, discarding all layers and history.)</p> 583 584<p>Yocto's "core-image-minimal" target (only 3,106 build steps in the 3.3 585release, which includes building host versions of gnome packages and 586<a href=https://landley.net/notes-2019.html#06-02-2019>something called</a> 587the "uninative binary shim") builds a busybox-based system with the following commands:</p> 588 589<blockquote><b> 590<span id=yocto_cmd> 591addgroup adduser ascii sh awk base32 basename blkid bunzip2 bzcat bzip2 cat 592chattr chgrp chmod chown chroot chvt clear cmp cp cpio crc32 cut date dc dd 593deallocvt delgroup deluser depmod df diff dirname dmesg dnsdomainname du 594dumpkmap dumpleases echo egrep env expr false fbset fdisk fgrep find flock 595free fsck fstrim fuser getopt getty grep groups gunzip gzip head hexdump 596hostname hwclock id ifconfig ifdown ifup insmod ip kill killall klogd less 597ln loadfont loadkmap logger logname logread losetup ls lsmod lzcat md5sum 598mesg microcom mkdir mkfifo mknod mkswap mktemp modprobe more mount mountpoint 599mv nc netstat nohup nproc nslookup od openvt patch pgrep pidof pivot_root 600printf ps pwd rdate readlink realpath reboot renice reset resize rev rfkill 601rm rmdir rmmod route run-parts sed seq setconsole setsid sh sha1sum sha256sum 602shuf sleep sort start-stop-daemon stat strings stty sulogin swapoff swapon 603switch_root sync sysctl syslogd tail tar tee telnet test tftp time top touch 604tr true ts tty udhcpc udhcpd umount uname uniq unlink unzip uptime users 605usleep vi watch wc wget which who whoami xargs xzcat yes zcat 606</span> 607</b></blockquote> 608 609 610 611<a name="fhs" /> 612<hr /><a href=fhs>Filesystem Hierachy Standard</a> 613<h2>Filesystem Hierarchy Standard:</h2> 614 615<p>Another standard taken over by the Linux Foundation. (At least the 616links to this one didn't <a href=http://lanana.org/>go 404</a> the 617instant they took it over). Of historical interest due to what it 618managed to achieve before they chased away the hobbyists maintaining it. 619Only one version (3.0 in 2015) has been released since the Linux Foundation 620absorbed the FHS. The previous release, Version 2.3, was released in 2004. 621The Linux Foundation did not retain earlier versions. The contents of 622the relevant sections appear identical between the two versions, the 623Linux Foundation just added section numbers.</p> 624 625<p><a href=https://refspects.linuxfoundation.org/FHS_3.0/fhs-3.0.html>FHS 3.0</a> 626section 3.4.2 requires commands to be in the /bin directory, and then 3.4.3 627has an optional list, 628and then 3.16.2 and 3.16.3 similarly cover /sbin. There are linux 629specific sections in 6.1.2 and 6.1.6 but everything in them is obsolete.</p> 630 631<p>The /bin options include csh but not bash, and ed but not vi. 632The /sbin options have update which seems obsolete (filesystem 633buffers haven't needed a userspace process to flush them for DECADES), 634fastboot and fasthalt (reboot and halt have -nf), and 635fsck.* and mkfs.* that don't actually specify any specific filesystems. 636Removing that gives us:</p> 637 638<blockquote><b> 639<span id=fhs_cmd> 640cat chgrp chmod chown cp date dd df dmesg echo false hostname kill ln 641login ls mkdir mknod more mount mv ps pwd rm rmdir sed sh stty su sync true 642umount uname tar cpio gzip gunzip zcat netstat ping 643shutdown fdisk getty halt ifconfig init mkswap reboot route swapon swapoff 644</span> 645</b></blockquote> 646 647<hr /><a name=buildroot /> 648<h2>buildroot:</h2> 649 650<p>If a toybox-based development environment is to support running 651buildroot under it, the <a href=https://buildroot.org/downloads/manual/manual.html#requirement-mandatory>mandatory packages</a> 652section of the buildroot manual lists:</p> 653 654<blockquote><p><b> 655which sed make bash patch gzip bzip2 tar cpio unzip rsync file bc wget 656</b></p></blockquote> 657 658<p>(It also lists binutils gcc g++ perl python, and for debian it wants 659build-essential. And it wants file to be in /usr/bin because 660<a href=https://git.busybox.net/buildroot/tree/support/dependencies/dependencies.sh?h=2018.02.x#n84>libtool 661breaks otherwise</a>.)</p> 662 663<p>Oddly, buildroot can't NOT cross compile. Buildroot does not support a cross toolchain that lives in "/usr/bin" 664with a prefix of "" (if you try, and chop out the test for a blank prefix, 665it dies trying to run "/usr/bin/-gcc"). You can patch your way to 666making it work if you try, but buildroot's developers explicitly do not 667support this.</p> 668 669<hr /><a name=klibc /> 670<h2>klibc:</h2> 671 672<p>Long ago some kernel developers came up with a project called 673<a href=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Klibc>klibc</a>. 674After a decade of development it still has no web page or HOWTO, 675and nobody's quite sure if the license is BSD or GPL. It inexplicably 676<a href=http://www.infoworld.com/d/data-center/perl-isnt-going-anywhere-better-or-worse-211580>requires perl to build</a>, and seems like an ideal candidate for 677replacement.</p> 678 679<p>In addition to a C library less general-purpose than old versions of bionic 680(let alone musl), klibc builds a random assortment of executables to run init scripts 681with. There's no multiplexer command, these are individual executables:</p> 682 683<blockquote><p><b> 684cat chroot cpio dd dmesg false fixdep fstype gunzip gzip halt ipconfig kill 685kinit ln losetup ls minips mkdir mkfifo mknodes 686mksyntax mount mv nfsmount nuke pivot_root poweroff readlink reboot resume 687run-init sh sha1hash sleep sync true umount uname zcat 688</b></p></blockquote> 689 690<p>To get that list, build klibc according to the instructions (I 691<a href=http://landley.net/notes-2013.html#23-01-2013>looked at</a> version 6922.0.2 and did cd klibc-*; ln -s /output/of/kernel/make/headers_install 693linux; make) then <b>echo $(for i in $(find . -type f); do file $i | grep -q 694executable && basename $i; done | grep -v '[.]g$' | sort -u)</b> to find 695executables, then eliminate the *.so files and *.shared duplicates.</p> 696 697<p>Some of those binaries are build-time tools that don't get installed, 698which removes mknodes, mksyntax, sha1hash, and fixdep from the list. 699(And sha1hash is just an unpolished sha1sum anyway.)</p> 700 701<p>The run-init command is more commonly called switch_root, nuke is just 702"rm -rf -- $@", and minips is more commonly called "ps": I'm not doing aliases 703for these oddball names. 704The "kinit" command is another gratuitous rename, it's init running as PID 1. 705The halt, poweroff, and reboot commands work with it.</p> 706 707<p>Yet more stale forks of dash and gzip got sucked in here (see "dubious 708license terms" above).</p> 709 710<p>In theory "blkid" or "file" handle fstype (and df for mounted filesystems), 711but we could do fstype.</p> 712 713<p>We should implement nfsmount, and probably smbmount 714and p9mount even though this hasn't got one. The reason these aren't 715in the base "mount" command is they interactively query login credentials.</p> 716 717<p>The ipconfig command here has a built in dhcp client, so it's ifconfig 718and dhcpcd and maybe some other stuff.</p> 719 720<p>The resume command is... weird. It finds a swap partition and reads data 721from it into a /proc file, something the kernel is capable of doing itself. 722(Even though the klibc author 723<a href=http://www.zytor.com/pipermail/klibc/2006-June/001748.html>attempted 724to remove</a> that capability from the kernel, current kernel/power/hibernate.c 725still parses "resume=" on the command line). And yet various distros seem to 726make use of klibc for this. 727Given the history of swsusp/hibernate (and 728<a href=http://lwn.net/Articles/333007>TuxOnIce</a> 729and <a href=http://lwn.net/Articles/242107>kexec jump</a>...) I've lost track 730of the current state of the art here. Ah, Documentation/power/userland-swsusp.txt 731has the API docs, and <a href=http://suspend.sf.net>here's a better 732tool</a>...</p> 733 734<p>This gives us a klibc command list:</p> 735 736<blockquote><b> 737<span id=klibc_cmd> 738cat chroot dmesg false kill ln losetup ls mkdir mkfifo readlink rm switch_root 739sleep sync true uname 740 741cpio dd ps mv pivot_root 742mount nfsmount fstype umount 743sh gunzip gzip zcat 744kinit halt poweroff reboot 745ipconfig 746resume 747</span> 748</b></blockquote> 749 750<hr /> 751<a name=glibc /> 752<h2>glibc</h2> 753 754<p>Rather a lot of command line utilities come bundled with glibc:</p> 755 756<blockquote><b> 757catchsegv getconf getent iconv iconvconfig ldconfig ldd locale localedef 758mtrace nscd rpcent rpcinfo tzselect zdump zic 759</b></blockquote> 760 761<p>Of those, musl libc only implements ldd. Of the rest:</p> 762 763<ul> 764<li><b>catchsegv</b> is a rudimentary debugger, probably out of scope for toybox.</li> 765<li><b>iconv</b> has been <a href="#susv4">previously discussed</a>.</li> 766<li><b>iconvconfig</b> is only relevant if iconv is user-configurable; musl uses a 767non-configurable iconv now that utf8+unicode exist.</li> 768<li><b>getconf</b> is a posix utility which displays several variables from 769unistd.h; it probably belongs in the development toolchain.</li> 770<li><b>getent</b> handles retrieving entries from passwd-style databases 771(in a rather lame way) and is trivially replacable by grep.</li> 772<li><b>locale</b> was discussed under <a href=#susv4>posix</a>. 773localedef compiles locale definitions, which musl currently does not use.</li> 774<li><b>mtrace</b> is a perl script to use the malloc debugging that glibc has built-in; 775this is not relevant for musl, and would necessarily vary with libc.</li> 776<li><b>nscd</b> is a name service caching daemon, which is not yet relevant for musl.</li> 777<li><b>rpcinfo</b> and <b>rpcent</b> are related to the Remote Procedure Calls 778layer (an old sun technology used by some userspace NFS implementations), 779which musl does not include and debian does not install by default.</li> 780</ul> 781 782<p>The remaining commands involve glibc's bundled timezone database, 783which seems to be derived from the <a href=http://www.iana.org/time-zones>IANA 784timezone database</a>. Unless we want to maintain our own fork of the 785standards body's database like glibc does, these are of no interest, 786but for completeness:</p> 787 788<ul> 789<li><b>tzselect</b> outputs a TZ variable correponding to user input. 790The documentation does not indicate how to use it in a script, but it seems 791that Debian may have done so.</li> 792<li><b>zdump</b> prints current time in each of several timezones, optionally 793outputting a great deal of extra information about each timezone.</li> 794<li><b>zic</b> converts a description of a timezone to a file in tz format.</li> 795</ul> 796 797<p>We implemented getconf, and I could see maybe arguing for ncsd. 798The rest are not relevant to toybox.</p> 799 800</b></blockquote> 801 802<hr /> 803<a name=sash /> 804<h2>Stand-Alone Shell</h2> 805 806<p>Wikipedia has <a href=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stand-alone_shell>a good 807summary of sash</a>, with links. The original Stand-Alone Shell project reached 808a stopping point, and then <a href=http://www.baiti.net/sash>"sash plus 809patches"</a> extended it a bit further. The result is a megabyte executable 810that provides 40 commands.</p> 811 812<p>Sash is a shell with built-in commands. It doesn't have a multiplexer 813command, meaning "sash ls -l" doesn't work (you have to go "sash -c 'ls -l'"). 814</p> 815 816<p>The list of commands can be obtained via building it and doing 817"echo help | ./sash | awk '{print $1}' | sed 's/^-//' | xargs echo", which 818gives us:</p> 819 820<blockquote><b> 821alias aliasall ar cd chattr chgrp chmod chown cmp cp chroot dd echo ed exec 822exit file find grep gunzip gzip help kill losetup losetup ln ls lsattr mkdir 823mknod more mount mv pivot_root printenv prompt pwd quit rm rmdir setenv source 824sum sync tar touch umask umount unalias where 825</b></blockquote> 826 827<p>Plus sh because it's a shell. A dozen or so commands can only sanely be 828implemented as shell builtins (alias aliasall cd exec exit prompt quit setenv 829source umask unalias), and where is an alias for which.</p> 830 831<p>This leaves:</p> 832 833<blockquote><b> 834<span id=sash_cmd> 835chgrp chmod chown cmp cp chroot echo find grep help kill losetup 836ln ls mkdir mknod mount mv pivot_root printenv pwd rm rmdir sync tar touch umount 837ar chattr dd ed file gunzip gzip lsattr more sh 838</span> 839</b></blockquote> 840 841<p>(For once, this project doesn't include a fork of gzip, instead 842it sucks in -lz from the host.)</p> 843 844<hr /> 845<a name=sbase /> 846<h2>sbase:</h2> 847 848<p>It's <a href=http://git.suckless.org/sbase>on suckless</a> in 849<a href=http://git.suckless.org/ubase>two parts</a>. As of November 2015 it's 850implemented the following (renaming "cron" to "crond" for 851consistency, and yanking "sponge", "mesg", "pagesize", "respawn", and 852"vtallow"):</p> 853 854<blockquote><p> 855<span id=sbase_cmd> 856basename cal cat chgrp chmod chown chroot cksum cmp comm cp crond cut date 857dirname du echo env expand expr false find flock fold getconf grep head 858hostname join kill link ln logger logname ls md5sum mkdir mkfifo mktemp mv 859nice nl nohup od paste printenv printf pwd readlink renice rm rmdir sed seq 860setsid sha1sum sha256sum sha512sum sleep sort split strings sync tail 861tar tee test tftp time touch tr true tty uname unexpand uniq unlink uudecode 862uuencode wc which xargs yes 863</span> 864</p></blockquote> 865 866<p>and<p> 867 868<blockquote><p> 869<span id=sbase_cmd> 870chvt clear dd df dmesg eject fallocate free id login mknod mountpoint 871passwd pidof ps stat su truncate unshare uptime watch 872who 873</span> 874</p></blockquote> 875 876<hr /> 877<a name=nash /> 878<h2>nash:</h2> 879 880<p>Red Hat's nash was part of its "mkinitrd" package, replacement for a shell 881and utilities on the boot floppy back in the 1990's (the same general idea 882as BusyBox, developed independently). Red Hat discontinued nash development 883in 2010, replacing it with dracut (which collects together existing packages, 884including busybox).</p> 885 886<p>I couldn't figure out how to beat source code out of 887<a href=http://pkgs.fedoraproject.org/git/mkinitrd>Fedora's current git</a> 888repository. The last release version that used it was Fedora Core 12 889which has <a href=http://archive.fedoraproject.org/pub/archive/fedora/linux/releases/12/Fedora/source/SRPMS/mkinitrd-6.0.93-1.fc12.src.rpm>a source rpm</a> 890that can be unwound with "rpm2cpio mkinitrd.src.rpm | cpio -i -d -H newc 891--no-absolute-filenames" and in there is a mkinitrd-6.0.93.tar.bz2 which 892has the source.</p> 893 894<p>In addition to being a bit like a command shell, the nash man page lists the 895following commands:</p> 896 897<blockquote><p> 898access echo find losetup mkdevices mkdir mknod mkdmnod mkrootdev mount 899pivot_root readlink raidautorun setquiet showlabels sleep switchroot umount 900</p></blockquote> 901 902<p>Oddly, the only occurrence of the string pivot_root in the nash source code 903is in the man page, the command isn't there. (It seems to have been removed 904when the underscoreless switchroot went in.)</p> 905 906<p>A more complete list seems to be the handlers[] array in nash.c:</p> 907 908<blockquote><p> 909access buildEnv cat cond cp daemonize dm echo exec exit find kernelopt 910loadDrivers loadpolicy mkchardevs mkblktab mkblkdevs mkdir mkdmnod mknod 911mkrootdev mount netname network null plymouth hotplug killplug losetup 912ln ls raidautorun readlink resume resolveDevice rmparts setDeviceEnv 913setquiet setuproot showelfinterp showlabels sleep stabilized status switchroot 914umount waitdev 915</p></blockquote> 916 917<p>This list is nuts: "plymouth" is an alias for "null" which is basically 918"true" (which the above list doesn't have). Things like buildEnv and 919loadDrivers are bespoke Red Hat behavior that might as well be hardwired in 920to nash's main() without being called.</p> 921 922<p>Instead of eliminating items 923from the list with an explanation for each, I'm just going to cherry pick 924a few: the device mapper (dm, raidautorun) is probably interesting, 925hotplug (may be obsolete due to kernel changes that now load firmware 926directly), and another "resume" ala klibc.</p> 927 928<p>But mostly: I don't care about this one. And neither does Red Hat anymore.</p> 929 930<p>Verdict: ignore</p> 931 932<hr /> 933<a name=beastiebox /> 934<h2>Beastiebox</h2> 935 936<p>Back in 2008, the BSD guys vented some busybox-envy 937<a href=http://beastiebox.sourceforge.net>on sourceforge</a>. Then stopped. 938Their repository is still in CVS, hasn't been touched in years, it's a giant 939hairball of existing code sucked together. (The web page says the author 940is aware of crunchgen, but decided to do this by hand anyway. This is not 941a collection of new code, it's a katamari of existing code rolled up in a 942ball.)</p> 943 944<p>Combining the set of commands listed on the web page with the set of 945man pages in the source gives us:</P> 946 947<blockquote><p> 948[ cat chmod cp csh date df disklabel dmesg echo ex fdisk fsck fsck_ffs getty 949halt hostname ifconfig init kill less lesskey ln login ls lv mksh more mount 950mount_ffs mv pfctl ping poweroff ps reboot rm route sed sh stty sysctl tar test 951traceroute umount vi wiconfig 952</p></blockquote> 953 954<p>Apparently lv is the missing link between ed and vi, copyright 1982-1997 (do 955not want), ex is another obsolete vi mode, lesskey is "used to 956specify a set of key bindings to be used with less", and csh is a shell they 957sucked in (even though they have mksh?), [ is an alias for test. Several more bsd-isms that don't have Linux 958equivalents (even in the ubuntu "install this package" search) are 959disklabel, fsck_ffs, mount_ffs, and pfctl. And wiconfig is a 960wavelan interface network card driver utility. Subtracting all that and the 961commands toybox already implements at triage time, we get:</p> 962 963<blockquote><p> 964<span id=beastiebox_cmd> 965fdisk fsck getty halt ifconfig init kill less more mount mv ping poweroff 966ps reboot route sed sh stty sysctl tar test traceroute umount vi 967</span> 968</p></blockquote> 969 970<p>Not a hugely interesting list, but eh.</p> 971 972<p>Verdict: ignore</p> 973 974<hr /> 975<a name=BsdBox /> 976<h2>BsdBox</h2> 977 978<p>Somebody decided to do a <a href=https://wiki.freebsd.org/AdrianChadd/BsdBox>multicall binary for freebsd</a>.</p> 979 980<p>They based it on crunchgen, a tool that glues existing programs together 981into an archive and uses the name to execute the right one. It has no 982simplification or code sharing benefits whatsoever, it's basically an 983archiver that produces executables.</p> 984 985<p>That's about where I stopped reading.</p> 986 987<p>Verdict: ignore.</p> 988 989<hr /> 990<a name=slowaris /> 991<h2>OpenSolaris Busybox</h2> 992 993<p>Somebody <a href=http://hub.opensolaris.org/bin/view/Project+busybox/>wrote 994a wiki page</a> saying that Busybox for OpenSolaris would be a good idea.</p> 995 996<p>The corresponding "files" tab is an auto-generated stub. The project never 997even got as far as suggesting commands to include before Oracle discontinued 998OpenSolaris.</p> 999 1000<p>Verdict: ignore.</p>
1001 1002<hr /> 1003<a name=uclinux /> 1004<h2>uClinux</h2> 1005 1006<p>Long ago a hardware developer named Jeff Dionne put together a 1007nommu Linux distribution, which involved rewriting a lot of command line 1008utilities that relied on <a href=http://nommu.org/memory-faq.txt>features 1009unavailable on nommu</a> hardware.</p> 1010 1011<p>In 2003 Jeff moved to Japan and handed 1012the project off to people who allowed it to roll to a stop. The website 1013turned into a mess of 404 links, the navigation indexes stopped being 1014updated over a decade ago, and the project's CVS repository suffered a 1015hard drive failure for which there were no backups. The project continued 1016to put out "releases" through 2014 (you have to scroll down in the "news" 1017section to find them, the "HTTP download" section in the nav bar on the 1018left hasn't been updated in over a decade), which were hand-updated tarball 1019snapshots mostly consisting of software from the 1990's. For example the 10202014 release still contained ipfwadm, the package which predated ipchains, 1021which predated iptables, which is in the process of being replaced by 1022nftables.</p> 1023 1024<p>Nevertheless, people still try to use this because the project was viewed 1025as the place to discuss, develop, and learn about nommu Linux. 1026The role of uclinux.org as an educational resource kept people coming 1027to it long after it had collapsed as a Linux distro.</p> 1028 1029<p>Starting around 0.6.0 toybox began to address nommu support with the goal 1030of putting uClinux out of its misery.</p> 1031 1032<p>An analysis of <a href=http://www.uclinux.org/pub/uClinux/dist/uClinux-dist-20140504.tar.bz2>uClinux-dist-20140504</a> found 312 package 1033subdirectories under "user".</p> 1034 1035<h3>Taking out the trash</h3> 1036 1037<p>A bunch of packages (<b>inotify-tools, input-event-demon, ipsec-tools, netifd, 1038keepalived, mobile-broadband-provider-info, nuttp, readline, snort, 1039snort-barnyard, socat, sqlite, sysklogd, sysstat, tcl, ubus, uci, udev, 1040unionfs, uqmi, usb_modeswitch, usbutils, util-linux</b>) 1041are hard to evaluate because 1042uclinux has directories for them, but their source isn't actually in the 1043uclinux tree. In some of these the makefiles download a git repo during 1044the build, so I'm assuming you can build the external package if you really 1045care. (Even when I know what these packages do, I'm skipping them 1046because uclinux doesn't actually contain them, and any given snapshot 1047of the build system will bitrot as external web links change over time.)</p> 1048 1049<p>Other packages are orphaned, meaning they're not mentioned from any Kconfig 1050or Makefiles outside of their directory, so uclinux can't actually build 1051them: <b>mbus</b> is an orphaned i2c test program expecting to run in some sort 1052of hardwired hardware context, <b>mkeccbin</b> is an orphaned "ECC annotated 1053binary file" generator (meaning it's half of a flash writer), 1054<b>wsc_upnp</b> is a "Ralink WPS" driver (some sort of stale wifi chip)...</p> 1055 1056<p>The majority of the remaining packages are probably not of interest to 1057toybox due to being so obsolete or special purpose they may not actually be 1058of interest to anybody anymore. (This list also includes a lot of 1059special-purpose network back-end stuff that's hard for anybody but 1060datacenter admins to evaluate the current relevance of.)</p> 1061 1062<blockquote><b><p> 1063arj asterisk boottools bpalogin br2684ctl camserv can4linux cgi_generic 1064cgihtml clamav clamsmtp conntrack-tools cramfs crypto-tools cxxtest 1065ddns3-client de2ts-cal debug demo diald discard dnsmasq dnsmasq2 1066ethattach expat-examples ez-ipupdate fakeidentd 1067fconfig ferret flatfs flthdr freeradius freeswan frob-led frox fswcert 1068game gettyd gnugk haserl horch 1069hostap hping httptunnel ifattach ipchains 1070ipfwadm ipmasqadm ipportfw ipredir ipset iso_client 1071jamvm jffs-tools jpegview jquery-ui kendin-config kismet klaxon kmod 1072l2tpd lcd ledcmd ledcon lha lilo lirc lissa load loattach 1073lpr lrpstat lrzsz mail mbus mgetty microwin ModemManager msntp musicbox 1074nooom null openswan openvpn palmbot pam_* pcmcia-cs playrt plugdaemon pop3proxy 1075potrace qspitest quagga radauth 1076ramimage readprofile rdate readprofile routed rrdtool rtc-ds1302 1077sendip ser sethdlc setmac setserial sgutool sigs siproxd slattach 1078smtpclient snmpd net-snmp snortrules speedtouch squashfs scep sslwrap stp 1079stunnel tcpblast tcpdump tcpwrappers threaddemos tinylogin tinyproxy 1080tpt tripwire unrar unzoo version vpnled w3cam xl2tpd zebra 1081</p></b></blockquote> 1082 1083<p>This stuff is all over the place: arj, lha, rar, and zoo are DOS archivers, 1084ethattach describes itself as just "a network tool", 1085mail is a textmode smtp mailer literally described as "Some kind of mail 1086proggy" in uclinux's kconfig (as opposed to clamsmtp and smtpclient and 1087so on), this gettyd isn't a generic version but specifically a 1088hardwired ppp dialin utility, mgetty isn't a generic version but is combined 1089with "sendfax", hostap is an intersil prism driver, wlan-ng is also an 1090intersil prism dirver, null is a program to intentionally dereference a 1091null pointer (in case you needed one), iso_client is a 1092"Demo Application for the USB Device Driver", kendin-config is 1093"for configuring the Micrel Kendin KS8995M over QSPI", speedtouch configures 1094a specific brand of asdl modem, portmap is part of Anfs, 1095ferret, linux-igd, and miniupnp are all upnp packages, 1096lanbypass "can be used to control the LAN 1097bypass switches on the Advantech x86 based hardware platforms", lcd is 1098"test of lcddma device driver" (an out-of-tree Coldfire driver apparently 1099lost to history, the uclinux linux-2.4.x directory has a config symbol for 1100it, but nothing in the code actually _uses_ it...), qspitest is another 1101coldfire thing, mii-tool-fec is 1102"strictly for the FEC Ethernet driver as implemented (and modified) for 1103the uCdimm5272", rtc-ds1302 and rtc-m41t11 are usermode drivers for specific 1104clock chips, stunnel is basically "openssl s_client -quiet -connect", 1105potrace is a bitmap to vector graphic converter, radauth performs command line 1106authentication against a radius server, 1107clamav, klaxon, ferret, l7-protocols, and nessus are very old network security 1108software (it's got a stale snapshot of nmap too), xl2tpd is a PPP over UDP 1109tunnel (rfc 2661), zebra is the package quagga replaced, 1110lilo is the x86-only bootloader that predated grub (and recently discontinued 1111development), lissa is a "framebuffer graphics demo" from 11121998, the squashfs package here is the out of tree patches for 2.4 kernels 1113and such before the filesystem was merged upstream (as opposed to the 1114squashfs-new package which is a snapshot of the userspace tool from 2011), 1115load is basically "dd file /dev/spi", version is basically "cat /proc/version", 1116microwin is a port of the WinCE graphics API to Linux, scep is a 2003 1117implementation of an IETF draft abandoned in 2010, tpt depends on 1118Andrew Morton's 15 year old unmerged "timepegs" kernel patch using the pentium 1119cycle counter, vpnled controls a light that reboots systems (what?), 1120w3cam is a video4linux 1.0 client (v4l2 showed up during 2.5 and support for 1121the old v4l1 was removed in 2.6.38 back in 2011), busybox ate tinylogin 1122over a decade ago, lrpstat is a java network monitor 1123from 2001, lrzsz is zmodem/ymodem/zmodem, msntp and stp implement rfc2030 1124meaning it overflows in 2036 (the package was last updated in 2000), rdate 1125is rfc 868 meaning it also overflows in 2036 (which is why ntp was invented 1126a few decades back), reiserfsprogs development stopped abruptly after 1127Hans Reiser was convicted of murdering his wife Nina (denying it on the 1128stand and then leading them to the body as part of his plea bargain during 1129sentencing)... 1130</p> 1131 1132<p>Seriously, there's a lot of crap in there. It's hard to analyze most 1133of it far enough to prove it _doesn't_ do anything.</p> 1134 1135<h3>Non-toybox programs</h3> 1136 1137<p>The following software may actually still do something intelligible 1138(although the package versions tend to be years out of date), but 1139it's not a direction toybox has chosen to go in.</p> 1140 1141<p>There are several programming languages (<b>bash, lua, jamvm, tinytcl, 1142perl, python</b>) in there. Maybe someone somewhere wants a 2008 release of a 1143java virtual machine tested to work on nommu systems (jamvm), but it's out 1144of scope for toybox.</p> 1145 1146<p>A bunch of benchmark programs: <b>cpu, dhrystone, mathtest, nbench, netperf, 1147netpipe, and whetstone</b>.</p> 1148 1149<p>A bunch of web servers: <b>appWeb, boa, fnord (via tcpserver), goahead, httpd, 1150mini_httpd, and thttpd</b>.</p> 1151 1152<p>A bunch of shells: <b>msh</b> is a clever (I.E. obfuscated) little shell, 1153<b>nwsh</b> is "new shell" (that's what it called itself in 1999 anyway), 1154<b>sash</b> is another shell with a bunch of builtins (ls, ps, df, cp, date, reboot, 1155and shutdown, this roadmap analyzes it <a href="#sash">elsewhere</a>), 1156<b>sh</b> is a very old minix shell fork, and <b>tcsh</b> is also a shell.</p> 1157 1158<p>Also in this category, we have:</p> 1159 1160<blockquote><b><p> 1161dropbear jffs-tools jpegview kexec-tools bind ctorrent 1162iperf iproute2 ip-sentinel iptables kexec 1163nmap oggplay openssl oprofile p7zip pppd pptp play vplay 1164hdparm mp3play at clock 1165mtd-utils mysql logrotate brcfg bridge-utils flashw 1166ebtables etherwake ethtool expect gdb gdbserver hostapd 1167lm_sensors load netflash netstat-nat 1168radvd recover rootloader resolveip rp-pppoe 1169rsyslog rsyslogd samba smbmount squashfs-new squid ssh strace tip 1170uboot-envtools ulogd usbhubctrl vconfig vixie-cron watchdogd 1171wireless_tools wpa_supplicant 1172</p></b></blockquote> 1173 1174<p>An awful lot of those are borderline: play and vplay are wav file 1175audio players, there's oprofile _and_ readprofile (which just reads kernel 1176profiling data from /proc/profile), 1177radvd is a "routr advertisement daemon" (ipv6 stateless autoconf), 1178ctorrent is a bittorent client, 1179lm_sensors is hardware (heat?) monitoring, 1180resolveip is dig only less so, 1181rp-pppoe is ppp over ethernet, 1182ebtables is an ethernet version of iptables (for bridging), 1183their dropbear is from 2012, and that ssh version is from 2011 1184(which means it's about nine months too _old_ to have the heartbleed bug). 1185There's both ulogd and ulogd2 (no idea why), and pppd is version 2.4 but 1186there's a ppd-2.3 directory also. We used to be interested in ftpd/proftpd 1187as a way of uploading files out of a vm, but support for that has waned 1188over the years and there are lots of alternatives.</p> 1189 1190<p>Lots of flash stuff: 1191flashw is a flash writer, load is an spi flash loader, netflash writes 1192to flash via tftp, 1193recover is also a reflash daemon intended to come up when the system can't boot, 1194rootloader seems to be another reflash daemon but without dhcp.</p> 1195 1196<h3>Already in roadmap</h3> 1197 1198<p>The following packages contain commands already in the toybox roadmap:</p> 1199 1200<blockquote><b><p> 1201agetty cal cksum cron dhcpcd dhcpcd-new dhcpd dhcp-isc dosfstools e2fsprogs 1202elvis-tiny levee fdisk fileutils ftp grep hd hwclock inetd init ntp 1203iputils login module-init-tools netcat shutils ntpdate lspci ping procps 1204rsync shadow shutils stty sysutils telnet telnetd tftp tftpd traceroute 1205unzip wget mawk net-tools 1206</p></b></blockquote> 1207 1208<p>There are some duplicates in there, levee is a tiny vi implementation 1209like elvis-tiny, ntp and ntpdate overlap, etc.</p> 1210 1211<p>Verdict: We don't really need to do a whole lot special for nommu 1212systems, just get the existing toybox roadmap working on nommu and 1213we're good. The uClinux project can rest in peace.</p> 1214 1215<hr /> 1216<h2>Requests:</h2> 1217 1218<p>The following additional commands have been requested (and often submitted) 1219by various users. I _really_ need to clean up this section.</p> 1220 1221<p>Also:</p> 1222<blockquote><b> 1223<span id=request> 1224dig freeramdisk getty halt hexdump hwclock klogd modprobe ping ping6 pivot_root 1225poweroff readahead rev sfdisk sudo syslogd taskset telnet telnetd tracepath 1226traceroute unzip usleep vconfig zip free login modinfo unshare netcat help w 1227iwconfig iwlist rdate 1228dos2unix unix2dos catv clear 1229pmap realpath setsid timeout truncate 1230mkswap swapon swapoff 1231count oneit fstype 1232acpi blkid eject pwdx 1233sulogin rfkill bootchartd 1234arp makedevs sysctl killall5 crond crontab deluser last mkpasswd watch 1235blockdev rpm2cpio arping brctl dumpleases fsck 1236tcpsvd tftpd 1237factor fallocate fsfreeze inotifyd lspci nbd-client partprobe strings 1238base32 base64 mix 1239reset hexedit nsenter shred 1240fsync insmod ionice lsmod lsusb rmmod vmstat xxd top iotop 1241lsof ionice compress dhcp dhcpd addgroup delgroup host iconv ip 1242ipcrm ipcs netstat openvt 1243deallocvt iorenice 1244udpsvd adduser 1245microcom tunctl chrt getfattr setfattr 1246kexec 1247ascii crc32 devmem fmt i2cdetect i2cdump i2cget i2cset mcookie prlimit sntp ulimit uuidgen dhcp6 ipaddr iplink iproute iprule iptunnel cd exit toysh bash traceroute6 1248blkdiscard rtcwake 1249watchdog 1250pwgen readelf unicode 1251rsync 1252linux32 hd strace 1253</span> 1254</b></blockquote> 1255 1256<hr /> 1257<a name=packages /> 1258<h2>Other packages</h2> 1259 1260<p>System administrators have <a href=https://github.com/landley/toybox/issues/168#issuecomment-583725500>asked</a> what other Linux packages toybox commands 1261replace, so they can annotate alternatives in their package management system.</p> 1262 1263<p>This section uses the package definitions from Chapter 6 of 1264<a href=http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/lfs/downloads/9.0/LFS-BOOK-9.0-NOCHUNKS.html>Linux From Scratch 9.0</a>). Each package lists what we currently 1265replace, pending commands [in square brackets], and what we DON'T plan to 1266implement.</p> 1267 1268<p>Each "see also" note means the listed package also installs the listed shared 1269libraries. (While toybox contains equivalent functionality to a lot of these 1270shared libraries in its lib/ directory, it does not currently provide a shared 1271library interface.)</p> 1272 1273<h3>Packages toybox plans to provide complete-ish replacements for:</h3> 1274<ul> 1275<li><b>file</b>: file (see also: libmagic)</li> 1276<li><b>m4</b>: [m4]</li> 1277<li><b>bc</b>: [bc] [dc]</li> 1278<li><b>bison</b>: [yacc] (not: bison, see also: liby)</li> 1279<li><b>flex</b>: [lex] (not: flex flex++, see also: libfl)</li> 1280<li><b>make</b>: [make]</li> 1281<li><b>sed</b>: sed</li> 1282<li><b>grep</b>: grep egrep fgrep</li> 1283<li><b>bash</b>: bash sh (not: bashbug)</li> 1284<li><b>diffutils</b>: cmp [diff] [diff3] [sdiff]</li> 1285<li><b>gawk</b>: [awk] (not: gawk gawk-5.0.1)</li> 1286<li><b>findutils</b>: find xargs (not: locate updatedb)</li> 1287<li><b>less</b>: less (not: lessecho lesskey)</li> 1288<li><b>gzip</b>: zcat [gzip] [gunzip] [zcmp] [zdiff] [zegrep] [zfgrep] [zgrep] [zless] [zmore] 1289(not: gzexe uncompress zforce znew)</li> 1290<li><b>make</b>: [make]</li> 1291<li><b>patch</b>: patch</li> 1292<li><b>tar</b>: tar</li> 1293<li><b>procps-ng</b>: free pgrep pidof pkill ps sysctl top uptime vmstat w watch 1294[pmap] [pwdx] [slabtop] 1295(not: tload, see also libprocps)</li> 1296<li><b>sysklogd</b>: [klogd] [syslogd]</li> 1297<li><b>sysvinit</b>: [init] halt poweroff reboot killall5 [shutdown] 1298(not telinit runlevel fstab-decode bootlogd)</li> 1299<li><b>man</b>: man (but not accessdb apropos catman lexgrog mandb manpath whatis, 1300see also libman libmandb)</li> 1301<li><b>vim</b>: vi xxd (but not ex, rview, rvim, view, vim, vimdiff, vimtutor)</li> 1302<li><b>sysvinit</b>: [init] halt poweroff reboot killall5 [shutdown] 1303(not telinit runlevel fstab-decode bootlogd)</li> 1304<li><b>kmod</b>: insmod lsmod rmmod modinfo [modprobe] 1305(not: depmod kmod)</li> 1306<li><b>attr</b>: [getfattr] setfattr (not: attr, see also: libattr)</li> 1307<li><b>shadow</b>: [chfn] [chpasswd] [chsh] [groupadd] [groupdel] [groupmod] 1308[newusers] passwd [su] [useradd] [userdel] [usermod] 1309[lastlog] [login] [newgidmap] [newuidmap] 1310(not: chage expiry faillog groupmems grpck logoutd newgrp nologin pwck sg 1311vigr vipw, grpconv grpunconv pwconv pwunconv, chgpasswd gpasswd)</li> 1312<li><b>psmisc</b>: killall [fuser] [pstree] [peekfd] [prtstat] 1313(not: pslog pstree.x11)</li> 1314<li><b>inetutils</b>: dnsdomainname [ftp] hostname ifconfig ping ping6 [telnet] [tftp] [traceroute] (not: talk)</li> 1315<li><b>coreutils</b>: [ base32 base64 basename cat chgrp chmod chown chroot cksum comm cp cut date 1316dd df dirname du echo env expand factor false fmt fold groups head hostid id install 1317link ln logname ls md5sum mkdir mkfifo mknod mktemp mv nice nl nohup nproc od 1318paste printenv printf pwd readlink realpath rm rmdir seq sha1sum shred 1319sleep sort split stat sync tac tail tee test timeout touch true truncate 1320tty uname uniq unlink wc who whoami yes 1321[expr] [fold] [join] [numfmt] [runcon] [sha224sum] [sha256sum] [sha384sum] 1322[sha512sum] [stty] [b2sum] [tr] [unexpand] 1323(not: basenc chcon csplit dir dircolors pathchk 1324pinky pr ptx shuf stdbuf sum tsort users vdir, see also libstdbuf)</li> 1325<li><b>util-linux</b>: blkid blockdev cal chrt dmesg eject fallocate flock hwclock 1326ionice kill logger losetup mcookie mkswap more mount mountpoint nsenter 1327pivot_root prlimit rename renice rev setsid swapoff swapon switch_root taskset 1328umount unshare uuidgen 1329[addpart] [fdisk] [findfs] [findmnt] [fsck] [fsfreeze] [fstrim] [getopt] 1330[hexdump] [linux32] [linux64] [lsblk] [lscpu] [lsns] [setarch] 1331(not: agetty blkdiscard blkzone cfdisk chcpu chmem choom col 1332colcrt colrm column ctrlaltdel delpart fdformat fincore fsck.cramfs 1333fsck.minix ipcmk ipcrm ipcs isosize last lastb ldattach look lsipc 1334lslocks lslogins lsmem mesg mkfs mkfs.bfs mkfs.cramfs mkfs.minix namei partx 1335raw readprofile resizepart rfkill rtcwake script scriptreplay 1336setterm sfdisk sulogin swaplabel ul 1337uname26 utmpdump uuidd uuidparse wall wdctl whereis wipefs 1338i386 x86_64 zramctl)</li> 1339</ul> 1340 1341<p>Commentary: toybox init doesn't do runlevels, man and vim are just the 1342relevant commands without the piles of strange overgrowth, and if you want 1343to call a toybox binary by another name you can create a symlink to a 1344symlink. If somebody really wants to argue for "gzexe" or similar, be 1345my guest, but there's a lot of obsolete crap in shadow, coreutils, 1346util-linux...</p> 1347 1348<p>No idea why LFS is installing inetutils instead of net-tools 1349(which contains arp route ifconfig mii-tool nameif netstat and rarp that 1350toybox does or might implement, and plipconfig slattach that it probably won't.)</p> 1351 1352<h3>Packages toybox plans to provide partial replacements for:</h3> 1353 1354<p>Toybox provides replacements for some binaries from these packages, 1355but there are other useful binaries which this package provides that toybox 1356currently considers out of scope for the project:</p> 1357 1358<ul> 1359<li><b>binutils</b>: strings [ar] [nm] [readelf] [size] [objcopy] [strip] 1360(not c++filt, dwp, elfedit, gprof. The following commands belong 1361in <a href=/code/qcc>qcc</a>: addr2line as ld objdump ranlib)</li> 1362<li><b>bzip2</b>: bunzip2 bzcat [bzcmp] [bzdiff] [bzegrep] [bzfgrep] [bzgrep] [bzless] 1363[bzmore] (not: bzip2, bzip2recover, see also libbz2)</li> 1364<li><b>xz</b>: [xzcat] [lzcat] [lzcmp] [lzdiff] [lzegrep] [lzfgrep] [lzgrep] 1365[lzless] [lzmadec, lzmainfo] [lzmore] [unlzma] [unxz] [xzcat] 1366[xzcmp] [xzdec] [xzdiff] [xzegrep] [xzfgrep] [xzgrep] [xzless] [xzmore] 1367(not: compression side, see also: liblzma)</li> 1368<li><b>ncurses</b>: clear reset (not: everything else, see also: libcurses)</li> 1369<li><b>e2fsprogs</b>: chattr lsattr [e2fsck] [mkfs.ext2] [mkfs.ext3] 1370[fsck.ext2] [fsck.ext3] [e2label] [resize2fs] [tune2fs] 1371(not badblocks compile_et debugfs dumpe2fse2freefrag e2image 1372e2mmpstatus e2scrub e2scrub_all e2undo e4crypt e4defrag filefrag 1373fsck.ext4 logsave mk_cmds mkfs.ext4 mklost+found)</li> 1374</ul> 1375 1376<p>Toybox provides several decompressors but compresses to a single format 1377(deflate, ala gzip/zlib). Our e2fsprogs doesn't currently plan to support 1378ext4 or defrag. The "qcc" reference is because someday an external project to glue 1379QEMU's <a href=https://git.qemu.org/?p=qemu.git;a=blob;f=tcg/README;h=bfa2e4ed246c;hb=HEAD>Tiny Code Generator</a> 1380to Fabrice Bellard's old <a href=http://landley.net/hg/tinycc>Tiny C Compiler</a> 1381making a multicall binary that does cc/ld/as for all the targets QEMU 1382supports (then use the 1383<a href=https://github.com/JuliaComputing/llvm-cbe>LLVM C Backend</a> 1384to compile LLVM itself to C for use as a modern replacement for 1385<a href=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cfront>cfront</a> to bootstrap 1386C++ code) is under consideration 1387as a successor project to toybox. Until then things like objdump -d 1388(requiring target-specific disassembly for an unbounded number of architectures) 1389are out of scope for toybox. (This means drawing the line somewhere between 1390architecture-specific support in file and strace, and including a full 1391assembler for each architecture.)</p> 1392</span> 1393 1394<h3>Packages from LFS ch6 toybox does NOT plan to replace:</h3> 1395 1396<ul> 1397<li><b>linux-api-headers</b></li> 1398<li><b>man-pages glibc</b></li> 1399<li><b>zlib</b></li> 1400<li><b>readline</b></li> 1401<li><b>gmp</b></li> 1402<li><b>mpfr</b></li> 1403<li><b>mpc</b></li> 1404<li><b>gcc</b></li> 1405<li><b>pkg-config</b></li> 1406<li><b>ncurses</b></li> 1407<li><b>acl</b></li> 1408<li><b>libcap</b></li> 1409<li><b>psmisc</b></li> 1410<li><b>iana-etc</b></li> 1411<li><b>libtool</b></li> 1412<li><b>gdbm</b></li> 1413<li><b>gperf</b></li> 1414<li><b>expat</b></li> 1415<li><b>perl</b></li> 1416<li><b>XML::Parser</b></li> 1417<li><b>intltool</b></li> 1418<li><b>autoconf</b></li> 1419<li><b>automake</b></li> 1420<li><b>gettext</b></li> 1421<li><b>libelf</b></li> 1422<li><b>libffi</b></li> 1423<li><b>openssl</b></li> 1424<li><b>python</b></li> 1425<li><b>ninja</b></li> 1426<li><b>meson</b></li> 1427<li><b>check</b></li> 1428<li><b>groff</b></li> 1429<li><b>grub</b></li> 1430<li><b>libpipeline</b></li> 1431<li><b>texinfo</b></li> 1432</ul> 1433 1434<p>That said, we do implement our own zlib and readline replacements, and 1435presumably _could_ export them as library bindings. Plus we provide 1436our own version of a bunch of the section 1 man pages (as command help). 1437Possibly libcap and acl are interesting?</p> 1438 1439<h3>Misc</h3> 1440 1441<p>The kbd package has over a dozen commands, we only implement chvt. The 1442iproute2 package implements over a dozen commands, there's an "ip" in 1443pending but I'm not a fan (ifconfig and route and such should be extended 1444to work properly). We don't implement eudev, but toybox's maintainer 1445created busybox mdev way back when (which replaces it) and plans to do a 1446new one for toybox as soon as we work out what subset is still needed now that 1447devtmpfs is available.</p> 1448 1449<!-- #include "footer.html" --> 1450 1451