docs/Configure.help

# BusyBox configuration option Help File
#
# Format of this file: description<nl>variable<nl>help text<nl><nl>.
# The help texts may contain empty lines, but every non-empty line must
# be indented two positions.  Order of the help texts does not matter,
# however, no variable should be documented twice: if it is, only the
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#
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# internally by the maintainers' consistency-checking tools.
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# If you add a help text to this file, please try to be as gentle as
# possible. Don't use unexplained acronyms and generally write for the
# hypothetical ignorant but intelligent user who has just bought a PC,
# removed Windows, installed Linux and is now compiling up BusyBox
# for the first time. Tell them what to do if they're unsure. 
#
# Mention all the relevant READMEs and HOWTOs in the help text.
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# surrounded by <>.
#
# Repetitions are fine since the help texts are not meant to be read
# in sequence.  It is good style to include URLs pointing to more
# detailed technical information, pictures of the hardware, etc.
#
# The most important thing to include in a help entry is *motivation*.
# Explain why someone configuring BusyBox might want to select your
# option.
#

Show verbose applets usage message
CONFIG_FEATURE_VERBOSE_USAGE
  All BusyBox applets will show more verbose help messages when
  busybox is invoked with --help.  This will add lots of text to the
  busybox binary.  In the default configuration, this will add about
  13k, but it can add much more depending on your configuration.

Enable automatic symlink creation for BusyBox built-in applets
CONFIG_FEATURE_INSTALLER
  Enable 'busybox --install [-s]' support.  This will allow you to use
  busybox at runtime to create hard links or symlinks for all the
  applets that are compiled into busybox.  This feature requires the
  /proc filesystem.

Locale support
CONFIG_LOCALE_SUPPORT
  Enable this if your system has locale support, and you would like
  busybox to support locale settings.

Enable devfs support
CONFIG_FEATURE_DEVFS
  Enable if you want BusyBox to work with devfs.

Clean up all memory before exiting
CONFIG_FEATURE_CLEAN_UP
  As a size optimization, busybox by default does not cleanup memory
  that is dynamically allocated or close files before exiting. This
  saves space and is usually not needed since the OS will clean up for
  us.  Don't enable this unless you have a really good reason to clean
  things up manually.

Buffers allocation policy
CONFIG_FEATURE_BUFFERS_USE_MALLOC
  There are 3 ways BusyBox can handle buffer allocations:
  - Use malloc. This costs code size for the call to xmalloc.
  - Put them on stack. For some very small machines with limited stack
    space, this can be deadly.  For most folks, this works just fine.
  - Put them in BSS. This works beautifully for computers with a real
    MMU (and OS support), but wastes runtime RAM for uCLinux. This
    behavior was the only one available for BusyBox versions 0.48 and
    earlier.

Enable the ar applet
CONFIG_AR
  ar is an archival utility program used to create, modify, and
  extract contents from archives.  An archive is a single file holding
  a collection of other files in a structure that makes it possible to
  retrieve the original individual files (called archive members).
  The original files' contents, mode (permissions), timestamp, owner,
  and group are preserved in the archive, and can be restored on
  extraction.  
  On an x86 system, the ar applet adds about XXX bytes.

  Unless you have a specific application which requires ar, you should
  probably say N here.

Enable the bunzip2 applet
CONFIG_BUNZIP2
  bunzip2 is an compression utility using the Burrows-Wheeler block
  sorting text compression algorithm, and Huffman coding.  Compression
  is generally considerably better than that achieved by more
  conventional LZ77/LZ78-based compressors, and approaches the
  performance of the PPM family of statistical compressors.  
  
  The BusyBox bunzip2 applet is limited to de-compression only.  On an
  x86 system, this applet adds about XXX bytes.
  
  Unless you have a specific application which requires bunzip2, you
  should probably say N here.

# FIXME -- document the rest of the BusyBox config options....

Enable the run-parts applet
CONFIG_RUN_PARTS
  run-parts is an utility designed to run all the scripts in a directory.

  It is useful to set up a directory like cron.daily, where you need to
  execute all the scripts in that directory.

  This implementation of run-parts doesn't accept long options, and
  some features (like report mode) aren't implemented.

  Unless you know that run-parts is used in some of your scripts
  you can safely say N here.

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