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Rob Landley349ff522014-01-04 13:09:42 -06001<html><head><title>toybox roadmap</title>
Rob Landley8f90d3a2012-07-21 23:58:40 -05002<!--#include file="header.html" -->
3<title>Toybox Roadmap</title>
4
5<h2>Goals and use cases</h2>
6
7<p>We have several potential use cases for a new set of command line
8utilities, and are using those to determine which commands to implement
9for Toybox's 1.0 release.</p>
10
Rob Landley9a69a922013-02-23 18:32:08 -060011<p>The most interesting standards are POSIX-2008 (also known as the Single
12Unix Specification version 4) and the Linux Standard Base (version 4.1).
13The main test harness including toybox in Aboriginal Linux and if that can
14build itself using the result to build Linux From Scratch (version 6.8).
15We also aim to replace Android's Toolbox.</p>
16
17<p>At a secondary level we'd like to meet other use cases. We've analyzed
18the commands provided by similar projects (klibc, sash, sbase, s6, embutils,
19nash, and beastiebox), along with various vendor configurations of busybox,
20and some end user requests.</p>
21
22<p>Finally, we'd like to provide a good replacement for the Bash shell,
23which was the first program Linux ever ran and remains the standard shell
24of Linux no matter what Ubuntu says. This doesn't mean including the full
25set of Bash 4.x functionality, but does involve {various,features} beyond
26posix.</p>
Rob Landley8f90d3a2012-07-21 23:58:40 -050027
28<p>See the <a href=status.html>status page</a> for the combined list
29and progress towards implementing it.</p>
30
Rob Landley9a69a922013-02-23 18:32:08 -060031<ul>
32<li><a href=#susv4>POSIX-2008/SUSv4</a></li>
33<li><a href=#sigh>Linux "Standard" Base</a></li>
34<li><a href=#dev_env>Development Environment</a></li>
35<li><a href=#android>Android Toolbox</a></li>
Rob Landleya136fa52014-12-20 14:58:03 -060036<li><a href=#tizen>Tizen Core</a></li>
Rob Landley348a8002014-04-09 07:57:08 -050037<li>Miscelaneous: <a href=#klibc>klibc</a>, <a href=#glibc>glibc</a>,
38<a href=#sash>sash</a>, <a href=#sbase>sbase</a>, <a href=#s6>s6</a>...</li>
Rob Landley9a69a922013-02-23 18:32:08 -060039</ul>
40
Rob Landley8f90d3a2012-07-21 23:58:40 -050041<hr />
42<a name="standards">
43<h2>Use case: standards compliance.</h2>
44
Rob Landley571b0702012-11-13 16:13:45 -060045<h3><a name=susv4 /><a href="#susv4">POSIX-2008/SUSv4</a></h3>
Rob Landley8f90d3a2012-07-21 23:58:40 -050046<p>The best standards are the kind that describe reality, rather than
47attempting to impose a new one. (I.E. a good standard should document, not
48legislate.)</p>
49
50<p>The kind of standards which describe existing reality tend to be approved by
51more than one standards body, such ANSI and ISO both approving C. That's why
52the IEEE POSIX committee's 2008 standard, the Single Unix Specification version
534, and the Open Group Base Specification edition 7 are all the same standard
54from three sources.</p>
55
Rob Landley62f00212012-12-06 15:15:30 -060056<p>The <a href="http://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9699919799/idx/utilities.html">"utilities"
Rob Landley8f90d3a2012-07-21 23:58:40 -050057section</a>
58of these standards is devoted to the unix command line, and are the best such
59standard for our purposes. (My earlier work on BusyBox was implemented with
60regard to SUSv3, an earlier version of this standard.)</p>
61
62<h3>Problems with the standard</h3>
63
64<p>Unfortunately, these standards describe a subset of reality, lacking any
65mention of commands such as init, login, or mount required to actually boot a
66system. It provides ipcrm and ipcs, but not ipcmk, so you can use System V IPC
67resources but not create them.</p>
68
69<p>These standards also contain a large number of commands that are
70inappropriate for toybox to implement in its 1.0 release. (Perhaps some of
71these could be reintroduced in later releases, but not now.)</p>
72
73<p>Starting with the full "utilities" list, we first remove generally obsolete
74commands (compess ed ex pr uncompress uccp uustat uux), commands for the
75pre-CVS "SCCS" source control system (admin delta get prs rmdel sact sccs unget
76val what), fortran support (asa fort77), and batch processing support (batch
77qalter qdel qhold qmove qmsg qrerun qrls qselect qsig qstat qsub).</p>
78
79<p>Some commands are for a compiler toolchain (ar c99 cflow ctags cxref gencat
80iconv lex m4 make nm strings strip tsort yacc), which is outside of toybox's
81mandate and should be supplied externally. (Again, some of these may be
82revisited later, but not for toybox 1.0.)</p>
83
84<p>Some commands are part of a command shell, and cannot be implemented as
85separate executables (alias bg cd command fc fg getopts hash jobs kill read
86type ulimit umask unalias wait). These may be revisited as part of a built-in
87toybox shell, but are not exported into $PATH via symlinks. (If you fork a
88child process and have it "cd" then exit, you've accomplished nothing.)</p>
89
90<p>A few other commands are judgement calls, providing command-line
91internationalization support (iconv locale localedef), System V inter-process
92communication (ipcrm ipcs), and cross-tty communication from the minicomputer
93days (talk mesg write). The "pax" utility was supplanted by tar, "mailx" is
94a command line email client, and "lp" submits files for printing to... what
95exactly? (cups?) The standard defines crontab but not crond.</p>
96
97<p>Removing all of that leaves the following commands, which toybox should
98implement:</p>
99
100<blockquote><b>
101<span id=posix>
102at awk basename bc cal cat chgrp chmod chown cksum cmp comm cp
103csplit cut date dd df diff dirname du echo env expand expr false file find
104fold fuser getconf grep head id join kill link ln logger logname ls man
105mkdir mkfifo more mv newgrp nice nl nohup od paste patch pathchk printf ps
106pwd renice rm rmdir sed sh sleep sort split stty tabs tail tee test time
107touch tput tr true tty uname unexpand uniq unlink uudecode uuencode vi wc
108who xargs zcat
109</span>
110</b></blockquote>
111
Rob Landley571b0702012-11-13 16:13:45 -0600112<h3><a name=sigh /><a href="#sigh">Linux Standard Base</a></h3>
Rob Landley8f90d3a2012-07-21 23:58:40 -0500113
114<p>One attempt to supplement POSIX towards an actual usable system was the
115Linux Standard Base. Unfortunately, the quality of this "standard" is
116fairly low.</p>
117
118<p>POSIX allowed its standards process to be compromised
119by leaving things out, thus allowing IBM mainframes and Windows NT to drive
120a truck through the holes and declare themselves compilant. But it means what
121they DID standardize tends to be respected.</p>
122
123<p>The Linux Standard Base's failure mode is different, they respond to
124pressure by including special-case crap, such as allowing Red Hat to shoehorn
Rob Landley62f00212012-12-06 15:15:30 -0600125RPM on the standard even though all sorts of distros (Debian, Slackware, Arch,
126Gentoo) don't use it and probably never will. This means anything in the LSB is
Rob Landley8f90d3a2012-07-21 23:58:40 -0500127at best a suggestion: arbitrary portions of this standard are widely
128ignored.</p>
129
130<p>The LSB does specify a <a href=http://refspecs.linuxfoundation.org/LSB_4.1.0/LSB-Core-generic/LSB-Core-generic/cmdbehav.html>list of command line
131utilities</a>:</p>
132
133<blockquote><b>
134ar at awk batch bc chfn chsh col cpio crontab df dmesg du echo egrep
135fgrep file fuser gettext grep groupadd groupdel groupmod groups
136gunzip gzip hostname install install_initd ipcrm ipcs killall lpr ls
137lsb_release m4 md5sum mknod mktemp more mount msgfmt newgrp od passwd
138patch pidof remove_initd renice sed sendmail seq sh shutdown su sync
139tar umount useradd userdel usermod xargs zcat
140</b></blockquote>
141
142<p>Where posix specifies one of those commands, LSB's deltas tend to be
143accomodations for broken tool versions which aren't up to date with the
144standard 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>
145for examples.)</p>
146
147<p>Since we've already committed to using our own judgement to skip bits of
148POSIX, and LSB's "judgement" in this regard is purely bug workarounds to declare
149various legacy tool implementations "compliant", this means we're mostly
150interested in the set of tools that aren't specified in posix at all.</p>
151
152<p>Of these, gettext and msgfmt are internationalization, install_initd and
153remove_initd aren't present on ubuntu 10.04, lpr is out of scope, and
154lsb_release is a distro issue (it's a nice command, but the output of
155lsb_release -a is the name and version number of the linux distro you're
156running, which toybox doesn't know).</p>
157
158<p>This leaves:</p>
159
160<blockquote><b>
161<span id=lsb>
162chfn chsh dmesg egrep fgrep groupadd groupdel groupmod groups
163gunzip gzip hostname install killall md5sum
164mknod mktemp mount passwd pidof sendmail seq shutdown
165su sync tar umount useradd userdel usermod zcat
166</span>
167</b></blockquote>
168
169<hr />
170<a name="dev_env">
Rob Landley571b0702012-11-13 16:13:45 -0600171<h2><a href="#dev_env">Use case: provide a self-hosting development environment</a></h2>
Rob Landley8f90d3a2012-07-21 23:58:40 -0500172
173<p>The following commands are enough to build the Aboriginal Linux development
174environment, boot it to a shell prompt, and build Linux From Scratch 6.8 under
175it. (Aboriginal Linux currently uses BusyBox for this, thus provides a
176drop-in test environment for toybox. We install both implementations side
177by side, redirecting the symlinks a command at a time until the older
178package is no longer used, and can be removed.)</p>
179
180<p>This use case includes running init scripts and other shell scripts, running
181configure, make, and install in each package, and providing basic command line
182facilities such as a text editor. (It does not include a compiler toolchain or
183C library, those are outside the scope of this project.)</p>
184
185<blockquote><b>
186<span id=development>
187bzcat cat cp dirname echo env patch rmdir sha1sum sleep sort sync
188true uname wc which yes zcat
189awk basename bzip2 chmod chown cmp cut date dd diff
190egrep expr find grep gzip head hostname id install ln ls
191mkdir mktemp mv od readlink rm sed sh tail tar touch tr uniq
192wget whoami xargs chgrp comm gunzip less logname man split
193tee test time bunzip2 chgrp chroot comm cpio dmesg
194dnsdomainname ftpd ftpget ftpput gunzip ifconfig init less
195logname losetup man mdev mount mountpoint nc pgrep pkill
196pwd route split stat switch_root tac umount vi
197</span>
198</b></blockquote>
199
200<p>Note: Aboriginal Linux installs bash 2.05b as #!/bin/sh and its scripts
201require bash extensions not present in shells such as busybox ash.
202This means that toysh needs to supply several bash extensions _and_ work
203when called under the name "bash".</p>
204
Rob Landley8fe18142014-10-07 14:11:54 -0500205<p>The <a href=http://landley.net/aboriginal>Aboriginal Linux</a>
206self-bootstrapping build still uses the following busybox commands,
enh1fb20802014-11-24 17:26:09 -0600207not yet supplied by toybox:</p>
Rob Landley8fe18142014-10-07 14:11:54 -0500208
209<blockquote><p>
210ash awk bunzip2 bzip2 dd diff expr fdisk ftpd ftpget ftpput gunzip
211gzip less man pgrep ping pkill ps route sed sh sha512sum tar test tr unxz vi
212wget xzcat zcat</p></blockquote>
213
214<p>Many of those are in "pending". Most of the archive commands are needed
215because busybox tar doesn't call external versions. The remaining "difficult"
216commands are vi, awk, and ash.</p>
217
Rob Landley8f90d3a2012-07-21 23:58:40 -0500218<hr />
Rob Landley571b0702012-11-13 16:13:45 -0600219<h2><a name=android /><a href="#android">Use case: Replacing Android Toolbox</a></h2>
Rob Landley8f90d3a2012-07-21 23:58:40 -0500220
Rob Landleyfdc10c92012-10-16 17:09:30 -0500221<p>Android has a policy against GPL in userspace, so even though BusyBox
222predates Android by many years, they couldn't use it. Instead they grabbed
223an old version of ash and implemented their own command line utility set
enh1fb20802014-11-24 17:26:09 -0600224called "toolbox". ash was later replaced by
225<a href="https://www.mirbsd.org/mksh.htm">mksh</a>; toolbox is being
226replaced by toybox.</p>
Rob Landley8f90d3a2012-07-21 23:58:40 -0500227
Rob Landleyfdc10c92012-10-16 17:09:30 -0500228<p>Toolbox doesn't have its own repository, instead it's part of Android's
229<a href=https://android.googlesource.com/platform/system/core>system/core
Elliott Hughes2c7028a2015-03-23 11:44:56 -0500230git repository</a> (this analysis looked at commit 8ac94d3).</p>
Rob Landley8f90d3a2012-07-21 23:58:40 -0500231
Rob Landleyfdc10c92012-10-16 17:09:30 -0500232<h3>Toolbox commands:</h3>
233
enh1fb20802014-11-24 17:26:09 -0600234<p>According to system/core/toolbox/Android.mk the toolbox directory builds
235the following commands:</p>
Rob Landley8f90d3a2012-07-21 23:58:40 -0500236
237<blockquote><b>
Elliott Hughes2c7028a2015-03-23 11:44:56 -0500238dd du df getevent getprop getsebool iftop ioctl ionice load_policy log ls
239lsof mount nandread newfs_msdos ps prlimit renice restorecon route runcon
240schedtop sendevent setprop setsebool smd start stop top umount uptime
241watchprops
Rob Landleyfdc10c92012-10-16 17:09:30 -0500242</b></blockquote>
Rob Landley8f90d3a2012-07-21 23:58:40 -0500243
Rob Landleyfdc10c92012-10-16 17:09:30 -0500244<h3>Other Android core commands</h3>
245
enh1fb20802014-11-24 17:26:09 -0600246<p>Other than the toolbox directory, the currently interesting
Elliott Hughes2c7028a2015-03-23 11:44:56 -0500247subdirectories in the core repository are gpttool, init,
Elliott Hughes8c4fdd82015-02-07 19:51:27 -0600248logcat, logwrapper, mkbootimg, reboot, and run-as.</p>
Rob Landleyfdc10c92012-10-16 17:09:30 -0500249
250<ul>
Rob Landleyfdc10c92012-10-16 17:09:30 -0500251<li><b>gpttool</b> - subset of fdisk</li>
252<li><b>init</b> - Android's PID 1</li>
253<li><b>logcat</b> - read android log format</li>
254<li><b>logwrapper</b> - redirect stdio to android log</li>
255<li><b>mkbootimg</b> - create signed boot image</li>
enh1fb20802014-11-24 17:26:09 -0600256<li><b>reboot</b> - Android's reboot(1)</li>
Rob Landleyfdc10c92012-10-16 17:09:30 -0500257<li><b>run-as</b> - subset of sudo</li>
Rob Landleyfdc10c92012-10-16 17:09:30 -0500258</ul>
259
260<p>Almost all of these reinvent an existing wheel with less functionality and a
261different user interface. We may want to provide that interface, but
Elliott Hughes2c7028a2015-03-23 11:44:56 -0500262implementing the full commands (fdisk, init, and sudo) come first.</p>
Rob Landleyfdc10c92012-10-16 17:09:30 -0500263
264<p>Although logcat/logwrapper also reinvent a wheel, Android did so in the
265kernel and these provide an interface to that.</p>
266
enh1fb20802014-11-24 17:26:09 -0600267<p>Also, gpttool and mkbootimg are install tools.
268These aren't a priority if android wants to use its own
Rob Landleyfdc10c92012-10-16 17:09:30 -0500269bespoke code to install itself.</p>
270
271<h3>Analysis</h3>
272
273<p>For reference, combining everything listed above, we get:</p>
274
275<blockquote><b>
Elliott Hughes2c7028a2015-03-23 11:44:56 -0500276dd du df getevent getprop getsebool gpttool iftop init ioctl ionice
277load_policy log logcat logwrapper ls lsof mkbootimg mount nandread
278newfs_msdos ps prlimit reboot renice restorecon route runcon run-as
279schedtop sendevent setprop setsebool smd start stop top umount uptime
280watchprops
Rob Landleyfdc10c92012-10-16 17:09:30 -0500281</b></blockquote>
282
283<p>We may eventually implement all of that, but for toybox 1.0 we need to
enh1fb20802014-11-24 17:26:09 -0600284focus a bit. For our first pass, let's ignore selinux,
285and grab just logcat and logwrapper from the "core"
Rob Landleyfdc10c92012-10-16 17:09:30 -0500286commands (since the rest have some full/standard version providing that
287functionality, which we can implement a shim interface for later).</p>
288
Elliott Hughes2c7028a2015-03-23 11:44:56 -0500289<p>This means toybox should implement (or finish implementing):</p>
Rob Landley8f90d3a2012-07-21 23:58:40 -0500290<blockquote><b>
291<span id=toolbox>
Elliott Hughes2c7028a2015-03-23 11:44:56 -0500292dd du df getevent getprop iftop ioctl ionice log logcat logwrapper ls lsof
293mount nandread newfs_msdos ps prlimit renice route schedtop sendevent
294setprop smd start stop top umount uptime watchprops
Rob Landley8f90d3a2012-07-21 23:58:40 -0500295</span>
Rob Landleyc26ca6e2013-01-31 04:05:56 -0600296</b></blockquote>
Rob Landleyfdc10c92012-10-16 17:09:30 -0500297
Rob Landleya136fa52014-12-20 14:58:03 -0600298<hr />
299<h2><a name=tizen /><a href="#tizen">Use case: Tizen Core</a></h2>
300
301<p>The Tizen project has expressed a desire to eliminate GPLv3 software
302from its core system, and is installing toybox as
303<a href=https://wiki.tizen.org/wiki/Toybox>part of this process</a>.</p>
304
305<p>They have a fairly long list of new commands they'd like to see in toybox:</p>
306
307<blockquote><b>
308<span id=tizen>
309arch base64 users dir vdir unexpand shred join csplit
310hostid nproc runcon sha224 sha256 sha384 sha512 sha3 mkfs.vfat fsck.vfat
311dosfslabel uname stdbuf pinky diff3 sdiff zcmp zdiff zegrep zfgrep zless zmore
312</span>
313</blockquote>
314
315<p>In addition, they'd like to use several commands currently in pending:</p>
316
317<blockquote><b>
318<span id=tizen>
319tar diff printf wget rsync fdisk vi less tr test stty fold expr dd
320</span>
321</b></blockquote>
322
Rob Landley9a69a922013-02-23 18:32:08 -0600323<hr /><a name=klibc />
Rob Landley934b2d32013-05-10 18:54:14 -0500324<h2>klibc:</h2>
Rob Landley9a69a922013-02-23 18:32:08 -0600325
326<p>Long ago some kernel developers came up with a project called
327<a href=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Klibc>klibc</a>.
328After a decade of development it still has no web page or HOWTO,
329and nobody's quite sure if the license is BSD or GPL. It inexplicably
330<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
331replacement.</p>
332
333<p>In addition to a C library even less capable than bionic (obsoleted by
334musl), klibc builds a random assortment of executables to run init scripts
335with. There's no multiplexer command, these are individual executables:</p>
336
337<blockquote><p>
338cat chroot cpio dd dmesg false fixdep fstype gunzip gzip halt ipconfig kill
339kinit ln losetup ls minips mkdir mkfifo mknodes
340mksyntax mount mv nfsmount nuke pivot_root poweroff readlink reboot resume
341run-init sh sha1hash sleep sync true umount uname zcat
342</p></blockquote>
343
344<p>To get that list, build klibc according to the instructions (I
345<a href=http://landley.net/notes-2013.html#23-01-2013>looked at</a> version
3462.0.2 and did cd klibc-*; ln -s /output/of/kernel/make/headers_install
347linux; make) then <b>echo $(for i in $(find . -type f); do file $i | grep -q
348executable && basename $i; done | grep -v '[.]g$' | sort -u)</b> to find
349executables, then eliminated the *.so files and *.shared duplicates.</p>
350
351<p>Some of those binaries are build-time tools that don't get installed,
352which removes mknodes, mksyntax, sha1hash, and fixdep from the list.
353(And sha1hash is just an unpolished sha1sum anyway.)</p>
354
355<p>The run-init command is more commonly called switch_root, nuke is just
356"rm -rf -- $@", and minips is more commonly called "ps". I'm not doing aliases
357for the oddball names.</p>
358
359<p>Yet more stale forks of dash and gzip sucked in here (see "dubious
360license terms" above), adding nothing to the other projects we've looked at.
361But we still need sh, gunzip, gzip, and zcat to replace this package.</p>
362
363<p>By the time I did the analysis toybox already had cat, chroot, dmesg, false,
364kill, ln, losetup, ls, mkdir, mkfifo, readlink, rm, switch_root, sleep, sync,
365true, and uname.</p>
366
367<p>The low hanging fruit is cpio, dd, ps, mv, and pivot_root.</p>
368
369<p>The "kinit" command is another gratuitous rename, it's init running as PID 1.
370The halt, poweroff, and reboot commands work with it.</p>
371
372<p>I've got mount and umount queued up already, fstype and nfsmount go with
373those. (And probably smbmount and p9mount, but this hasn't got one. Those
374are all about querying for login credentials, probably workable into the
375base mount command.)</p>
376
377<p>The ipconfig command here has a built in dhcp client, so it's ifconfig
378and dhcpcd and maybe some other stuff.</p>
379
380<p>The resume command is... weird. It finds a swap partition and reads data
381from it into a /proc file, something the kernel is capable of doing itself.
382(Even though the klibc author
383<a href=http://www.zytor.com/pipermail/klibc/2006-June/001748.html>attempted
384to remove</a> that capability from the kernel, current kernel/power/hibernate.c
385still parses "resume=" on the command line). And yet various distros seem to
386make use of klibc for this>
387Given the history of swsusp/hibernate (and
388<a href=http://lwn.net/Articles/333007>TuxOnIce</a>
389and <a href=http://lwn.net/Articles/242107>kexec jump</a>) I've lost track
390of the current state of the art here. Ah, Documentation/power/userland-swsusp.txt
391has the API docs, and <a href=http://suspend.sf.net>here's a better
392tool</a>...</p>
393
394<p>So the list of things actually in klibc are:</p>
395
396<blockquote><b>
Rob Landleyc166faf2013-09-01 07:25:37 -0500397<span id=klibc_cmd>
Rob Landley9a69a922013-02-23 18:32:08 -0600398cat chroot dmesg false kill ln losetup ls mkdir mkfifo readlink rm switch_root
399sleep sync true uname
400
401cpio dd ps mv pivot_root
402mount nfsmount fstype umount
403sh gunzip gzip zcat
404kinit halt poweroff reboot
405ipconfig
406resume
407</span>
408</b></blockquote>
409
410<hr />
Rob Landley348a8002014-04-09 07:57:08 -0500411<a name=glibc />
412<h2>glibc</h2>
413
414<p>Rather a lot of command line utilities come bundled with glibc:</p>
415
416<blockquote><b>
417catchsegv getconf getent iconv iconvconfig ldconfig ldd locale localedef
418mtrace nscd rpcent rpcinfo tzselect zdump zic
419</b></blockquote>
420
Isaac Dunham931425c2014-04-12 17:26:44 -0500421<p>Of those, musl libc only implements ldd.</p>
Rob Landleycbd77522014-04-12 20:39:33 -0500422
Isaac Dunham931425c2014-04-12 17:26:44 -0500423<p>catchsegv is a rudimentary debugger, probably out of scope for toybox.</p>
Rob Landleycbd77522014-04-12 20:39:33 -0500424
Isaac Dunham931425c2014-04-12 17:26:44 -0500425<p>iconv has been <a href="#susv4">previously discussed</a>.</p>
Rob Landleycbd77522014-04-12 20:39:33 -0500426
Isaac Dunham931425c2014-04-12 17:26:44 -0500427<p>iconvconfig is only relevant if iconv is user-configurable; musl uses a
428non-configurable iconv.</p>
Rob Landleycbd77522014-04-12 20:39:33 -0500429
Isaac Dunham931425c2014-04-12 17:26:44 -0500430<p>getconf is a posix utility which displays several variables from
431unistd.h; it probably belongs in the development toolchain.</p>
Rob Landleycbd77522014-04-12 20:39:33 -0500432
433<p>getent handles retrieving entries from passwd-style databases
434(in a rather lame way) and is trivially replacable by grep.</p>
435
Isaac Dunham931425c2014-04-12 17:26:44 -0500436<p>locale was discussed under <a href=#susv4>posix</a>.
437localedef compiles locale definitions, which musl currently does not use.</p>
438
439<p>mtrace is a perl script to use the malloc debugging that glibc has built-in;
440this is not relevant for musl, and would necessarily vary with libc. </p>
Rob Landleycbd77522014-04-12 20:39:33 -0500441
Isaac Dunham931425c2014-04-12 17:26:44 -0500442<p>nscd is a name service caching daemon, which is not yet relevant for musl.
443rpcinfo and rpcent are related to rpc, which musl does not include.</p>
444
Rob Landleycbd77522014-04-12 20:39:33 -0500445<p>The remaining commands involve glibc's bundled timezone database,
446which seems to be derived from the <a href=http://www.iana.org/time-zones>IANA
447timezone database</a>. Unless we want to maintain our own fork of the
448standards body's database like glibc does, these are of no interest,
449but for completeness:</p>
450
Isaac Dunham931425c2014-04-12 17:26:44 -0500451<p>tzselect outputs a TZ variable correponding to user input.
452The documentation does not indicate how to use it in a script, but it seems
453that Debian may have done so.
454zdump prints current time in each of several timezones, optionally
455outputting a great deal of extra information about each timezone.
Rob Landleycbd77522014-04-12 20:39:33 -0500456zic converts a description of a timezone to a file in tz format.</p>
Isaac Dunham931425c2014-04-12 17:26:44 -0500457
Rob Landleycbd77522014-04-12 20:39:33 -0500458<p>None of glibc's bundled commands are currently of interest to toybox.</p>
Isaac Dunham931425c2014-04-12 17:26:44 -0500459
Isaac Dunham931425c2014-04-12 17:26:44 -0500460</b></blockquote>
Rob Landley348a8002014-04-09 07:57:08 -0500461
462<hr />
Rob Landley9a69a922013-02-23 18:32:08 -0600463<a name=sash />
464<h2>Stand-Alone Shell</h2>
465
466<p>Wikipedia has <a href=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stand-alone_shell>a good
467summary of sash</a>, with links. The original Stand-Alone Shell project reached
468a stopping point, and then <a href=http://www.baiti.net/sash>"sash plus
469patches"</a> extended it a bit further. The result is a megabyte executable
470that provides 40 commands.</p>
471
472<p>Sash is a shell with built-in commands. It doesn't have a multiplexer
473command, meaning "sash ls -l" doesn't work (you have to go "sash -c 'ls -l'").
474</p>
475
476<p>The list of commands can be obtained via building it and doing
477"echo help | ./sash | awk '{print $1}' | sed 's/^-//' | xargs echo", which
478gives us:</p>
479
480<blockquote><b>
481alias aliasall ar cd chattr chgrp chmod chown cmp cp chroot dd echo ed exec
482exit file find grep gunzip gzip help kill losetup losetup ln ls lsattr mkdir
483mknod more mount mv pivot_root printenv prompt pwd quit rm rmdir setenv source
484sum sync tar touch umask umount unalias where
485</b></blockquote>
486
487<p>Plus sh because it's a shell. A dozen or so commands can only sanely be
488implemented as shell builtins (alias aliasall cd exec exit prompt quit setenv
489source umask unalias), where is an alias for which, and at triage time toybox
490already has chgrp, chmod, chown, cmp, cp, chroot, echo, help, kill, losetup,
491ln, ls, mkdir, mknod, printenv, pwd, rm, rmdir, sync, and touch.</p>
492
493<p>This leaves:</p>
494
495<blockquote><b>
496<span id=sash_cmd>
497ar chattr dd ed file find grep gunzip gzip lsattr more mount mv pivot_root
498sh sum tar umount
499</span>
500</b></blockquote>
501
502<p>(For once, this project doesn't include a fork of gzip, instead
503it sucks in -lz from the host.)</p>
504
505<hr />
506<a name=sbase />
507<h2>sbase:</h2>
508
509<p>It's <a href=http://git.suckless.org/sbase>on suckless</a>. So far it's
510implemented:</p>
511
512<blockquote><p>
Rob Landleyc166faf2013-09-01 07:25:37 -0500513<span id=sbase_cmd>
Rob Landley9a69a922013-02-23 18:32:08 -0600514basename cat chmod chown cksum cmp cp date dirname echo false fold grep head
515kill ln ls mc mkdir mkfifo mv nl nohup pwd rm seq sleep sort tail tee test
516touch true tty uname uniq wc yes
517</span>
518</p></blockquote>
519
520<p>And has a TODO list:</p>
521
522<blockquote><p>
Rob Landleyc166faf2013-09-01 07:25:37 -0500523<span id=sbase_cmd>
Rob Landley9a69a922013-02-23 18:32:08 -0600524cal chgrp chvt comm cut df diff du env expand expr id md5sum nice paste
525printenv printf readlink rmdir seq sha1sum split sync test tr unexpand unlink
526who
527</span>
528</p></blockquote>
529
530<p>At triage time, of the first list I still need to do: fold grep mc mv nl. Of
531the second list: diff expr paste printf split test tr unexpand who.</p>
532
533<hr />
534<a name=s6 />
535<h2>s6</h2>
536
537<p>The website <a href=http://skarnet.org/software/>skarnet</a> has a bunch
538of small utilities as part of something called "s6". This includes the
539<a href=http://skarnet.org/software/s6-portable-utils>s6-portabile-utils</a>
540and the <a href=http://skarnet.org/software/s6-linux-utils>s6-linux-utils</a>.
541</p>
542
543<p>Both packages rely on multiple bespoke external libraries without which
544they can't compile. The source is completely uncommented and doesn't wrap at
54580 characters. Doing a find for *.c files brings up the following commands:</p>
546
547<blockquote><b>
548<span id=s6>
549basename cat chmod chown chroot clock cut devd dirname echo env expr false
550format-filter freeramdisk grep halt head hiercopy hostname linkname ln
551logwatch ls maximumtime memoryhog mkdir mkfifo mount nice nuke pause
552pivotchroot poweroff printenv quote quote-filter reboot rename rmrf sleep
553sort swapoff swapon sync tail test touch true umount uniquename unquote
554unquote-filter update-symlinks
555</span>
556</b></blockquote>
557
558<p>Triage: memoryhog isn't even listed on the website nor does it have
559a documentation file, clock seems like a subset
560of date, devd is some sort of netlink wrapper that spawns its command line
561every time it gets a message (maybe this is meant to implement part of
562udev/mdev?), format-filter is sort of awk's '{print $2}' function split out
563into its own command, hiercopy a subset of "cp -r", maximumtime is something
564I implemented as a shell script (more/timeout.sh in Aboriginal Linux),
565nuke isn't the same as klibc (this one's "kill SIG -1" only with hardwared
566SIG options), pause is a program that literally waits to be killed (I
567generally sleep 999999999 which is a little over 30 years),
568pivotchroot is a subset of switch_root, rmrf is rm -rf...</p>
569
570<p>I see "nuke" resurface, and if "rmrf" wasn't also here I might think
571klibc had a point.</b>
572
573<blockquote>
574basename cat chmod chown chroot cut dirname echo env expr false
575freeramdisk grep halt head hostname linkname ln
576logwatch ls mkdir mkfifo mount nice
577pivotchroot poweroff printenv quote quote-filter reboot rename sleep
578sort swapoff swapon sync tail test touch true umount uniquename unquote
579unquote-filter update-symlinks
580</blockquote>
581
582
583<hr />
584<a name=nash />
585<h2>nash:</h2>
586
587<p>Red Hat's nash was part of its "mkinitrd" package, replacement for a shell
588and utilities on the boot floppy back in the 1990's (the same general idea
589as BusyBox, developed independently). Red Hat discontinued nash development
590in 2010, replacing it with dracut (which collects together existing packages,
591including busybox).</p>
592
593<p>I couldn't figure out how to beat source code out of
594<a href=http://pkgs.fedoraproject.org/git/mkinitrd>Fedora's current git</a>
595repository. The last release version that used it was Fedora Core 12
596which 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>
597that can be unwound with "rpm2cpio mkinitrd.src.rpm | cpio -i -d -H newc
598--no-absolute-filenames" and in there is a mkinitrd-6.0.93.tar.bz2 which
599has the source.</p>
600
601<p>In addition to being a bit like a command shell, the nash man page lists the
602following commands:</p>
603
604<blockquote><p>
605access echo find losetup mkdevices mkdir mknod mkdmnod mkrootdev mount
606pivot_root readlink raidautorun setquiet showlabels sleep switchroot umount
607</p></blockquote>
608
609<p>Oddly, the only occurrence of the string pivot_root in the nash source code
610is in the man page, the command isn't there. (It seems to have been removed
611when the underscoreless switchroot went in.)</p>
612
613<p>A more complete list seems to be the handlers[] array in nash.c:</p>
614
615<blockquote><p>
616access buildEnv cat cond cp daemonize dm echo exec exit find kernelopt
617loadDrivers loadpolicy mkchardevs mkblktab mkblkdevs mkdir mkdmnod mknod
618mkrootdev mount netname network null plymouth hotplug killplug losetup
619ln ls raidautorun readlink resume resolveDevice rmparts setDeviceEnv
620setquiet setuproot showelfinterp showlabels sleep stabilized status switchroot
621umount waitdev
622</p></blockquote>
623
624<p>This list is nuts: "plymouth" is an alias for "null" which is basically
625"true" (which thie above list doesn't have). Things like buildEnv and
626loadDrivers are bespoke Red Hat behavior that might as well be hardwired in
627to nash's main() without being called.</p>
628
629<p>Instead of eliminating items
630from the list with an explanation for each, I'm just going to cherry pick
631a few: the device mapper (dm, raidautorun) is probably interesting,
632hotplug (may be obsolete due to kernel changes that now load firmware
633directly), and another "resume" ala klibc.</p>
634
635<p>But mostly: I don't care about this one. And neither does Red Hat anymore.</p>
636
Rob Landleyca04c7f2013-03-27 22:34:28 -0500637<p>Verdict: ignore</p>
638
Rob Landley9a69a922013-02-23 18:32:08 -0600639<hr />
640<a name=beastiebox />
641<h2>Beastiebox</h2>
642
643<p>Back in 2008, the BSD guys vented some busybox-envy
644<a href=http://beastiebox.sourceforge.net>on sourceforge</a>. Then stopped.
645Their repository is still in CVS, hasn't been touched in years, it's a giant
646hairball of existing code sucked together. (The web page says the author
647is aware of crunchgen, but decided to do this by hand anyway. This is not
648a collection of new code, it's a katamari of existing code rolled up in a
649ball.)</p>
650
651<p>Combining the set of commands listed on the web page with the set of
652man pages in the source gives us:</P>
653
654<blockquote><p>
655[ cat chmod cp csh date df disklabel dmesg echo ex fdisk fsck fsck_ffs getty
656halt hostname ifconfig init kill less lesskey ln login ls lv mksh more mount
657mount_ffs mv pfctl ping poweroff ps reboot rm route sed sh stty sysctl tar test
658traceroute umount vi wiconfig
659</p></blockquote>
660
661<p>Apparently lv is the missing link ed and vi, copyright 1982-1997 (do not
662want), ex is another obsolete vi mode, lesskey is "used to
663specify a set of key bindings to be used with less", and csh is a shell they
664sucked in, [ is an alias for test. Several more bsd-isms that don't have Linux
665equivalents (even in the ubuntu "install this package" search) are
666disklabel, fsck_ffs, mount_ffs, and pfctl. And wiconfig is a wavelan interface
667network card driver utility. Subtracting all that and the commands toybox
668already implements at triage time, we get:</p>
669
670<blockquote><p>
671<span id=beastiebox_cmd>
672fdisk fsck getty halt ifconfig init kill less mksh more mount mv ping poweroff
673ps reboot route sed sh stty sysctl tar test traceroute umount vi
674</span>
675</p></blockquote>
676
677<p>Not a hugely interesting list, but eh.</p>
678
Rob Landleyca04c7f2013-03-27 22:34:28 -0500679<p>Verdict: ignore</p>
680
681<hr />
682<a name=BsdBox />
683<h2>BsdBox</h2>
684
685<p>Somebody decided to do a <a href=https://wiki.freebsd.org/AdrianChadd/BsdBox>multicall binary for freebsd</a>.</p>
686
687<p>They based it on crunchgen, a tool that glues existing programs together
688into an archive and uses the name to execute the right one. It has no
689simplification or code sharing benefits whatsoever, it's basically an
690archiver that produces executables.</p>
691
692<p>That's about where I stopped reading.</p>
693
694<p>Verdict: ignore.</p>
695
696<hr />
697<a name=slowaris />
698<h2>OpenSolaris Busybox</h2>
699
700<p>Somebody <a href=http://hub.opensolaris.org/bin/view/Project+busybox/>wrote
701a wiki page</a> saying that Busybox for OpenSolaris would be a good idea.</p>
702
703<p>The corresponding "files" tab is an auto-generated stub. The project never
704even got as far as suggesting commands to include before Oracle discontinued
705OpenSolaris.</p>
706
707<p>Verdict: ignore.</p>
708
Rob Landley8f90d3a2012-07-21 23:58:40 -0500709<hr />
710<h2>Requests:</h2>
711
Rob Landley8fe18142014-10-07 14:11:54 -0500712<p>The following additional commands have been requested (and often submitted)
713by various users:</p>
Rob Landley8f90d3a2012-07-21 23:58:40 -0500714<blockquote><b>
715<span id=request>
Rob Landley64b63192013-12-31 09:01:32 -0600716dig freeramdisk getty halt hexdump hwclock klogd modprobe ping ping6 pivot_root
Rob Landleyca04c7f2013-03-27 22:34:28 -0500717poweroff readahead rev sfdisk sudo syslogd taskset telnet telnetd tracepath
718traceroute unzip usleep vconfig zip free login modinfo unshare netcat help w
Rob Landley64b63192013-12-31 09:01:32 -0600719ntpd iwconfig iwlist rdate
Rob Landley7dbb9822014-02-21 22:24:02 -0600720dos2unix unix2dos catv clear
721pmap realpath setsid timeout truncate
722mkswap swapon swapoff
723count oneit fstype
724acpi blkid eject pwdx
Rob Landley8fe18142014-10-07 14:11:54 -0500725sulogin rfkill bootchartd
726arp makedevs sysctl killall5 crond crontab deluser last mkpasswd watch
727ipaddr iplink iproute blockdev rpm2cpio arping brctl dumpleases fsck
728tcpsvd tftpd
729factor fallocate fsfreeze inotifyd lspci nbd-client partprobe strings
Rob Landley3c994042015-01-01 17:37:57 -0600730base64 mix
Rob Landley8f90d3a2012-07-21 23:58:40 -0500731</span>
732</b></blockquote>
733
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