Blame - www/roadmap.html - fp2-dev/platform/external/toybox

blob: 2457b4db6866edc27146a5ca30c406c15d8b3a75 [file] [log] [blame]

Rob Landley	349ff52	2014-01-04 13:09:42 -0600	[diff] [blame]	1	<html><head><title>toybox roadmap</title>
Rob Landley	8f90d3a	2012-07-21 23:58:40 -0500	[diff] [blame]	2	<!--#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
				8	utilities, and are using those to determine which commands to implement
				9	for Toybox's 1.0 release.</p>
				10
Rob Landley	9a69a92	2013-02-23 18:32:08 -0600	[diff] [blame]	11	<p>The most interesting standards are POSIX-2008 (also known as the Single
				12	Unix Specification version 4) and the Linux Standard Base (version 4.1).
				13	The main test harness including toybox in Aboriginal Linux and if that can
				14	build itself using the result to build Linux From Scratch (version 6.8).
				15	We 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
				18	the commands provided by similar projects (klibc, sash, sbase, s6, embutils,
				19	nash, and beastiebox), along with various vendor configurations of busybox,
				20	and some end user requests.</p>
				21
				22	<p>Finally, we'd like to provide a good replacement for the Bash shell,
				23	which was the first program Linux ever ran and remains the standard shell
				24	of Linux no matter what Ubuntu says. This doesn't mean including the full
				25	set of Bash 4.x functionality, but does involve {various,features} beyond
				26	posix.</p>
Rob Landley	8f90d3a	2012-07-21 23:58:40 -0500	[diff] [blame]	27
				28	<p>See the <a href=status.html>status page</a> for the combined list
				29	and progress towards implementing it.</p>
				30
Rob Landley	9a69a92	2013-02-23 18:32:08 -0600	[diff] [blame]	31	<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 Landley	a136fa5	2014-12-20 14:58:03 -0600	[diff] [blame]	36	<li><a href=#tizen>Tizen Core</a></li>
Rob Landley	348a800	2014-04-09 07:57:08 -0500	[diff] [blame]	37	<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 Landley	9a69a92	2013-02-23 18:32:08 -0600	[diff] [blame]	39	</ul>
				40
Rob Landley	8f90d3a	2012-07-21 23:58:40 -0500	[diff] [blame]	41	<hr />
				42	<a name="standards">
				43	<h2>Use case: standards compliance.</h2>
				44
Rob Landley	571b070	2012-11-13 16:13:45 -0600	[diff] [blame]	45	<h3><a name=susv4 /><a href="#susv4">POSIX-2008/SUSv4</a></h3>
Rob Landley	8f90d3a	2012-07-21 23:58:40 -0500	[diff] [blame]	46	<p>The best standards are the kind that describe reality, rather than
				47	attempting to impose a new one. (I.E. a good standard should document, not
				48	legislate.)</p>
				49
				50	<p>The kind of standards which describe existing reality tend to be approved by
				51	more than one standards body, such ANSI and ISO both approving C. That's why
				52	the IEEE POSIX committee's 2008 standard, the Single Unix Specification version
				53	4, and the Open Group Base Specification edition 7 are all the same standard
				54	from three sources.</p>
				55
Rob Landley	62f0021	2012-12-06 15:15:30 -0600	[diff] [blame]	56	<p>The <a href="http://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9699919799/idx/utilities.html">"utilities"
Rob Landley	8f90d3a	2012-07-21 23:58:40 -0500	[diff] [blame]	57	section</a>
				58	of these standards is devoted to the unix command line, and are the best such
				59	standard for our purposes. (My earlier work on BusyBox was implemented with
				60	regard 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
				65	mention of commands such as init, login, or mount required to actually boot a
				66	system. It provides ipcrm and ipcs, but not ipcmk, so you can use System V IPC
				67	resources but not create them.</p>
				68
				69	<p>These standards also contain a large number of commands that are
				70	inappropriate for toybox to implement in its 1.0 release. (Perhaps some of
				71	these could be reintroduced in later releases, but not now.)</p>
				72
				73	<p>Starting with the full "utilities" list, we first remove generally obsolete
				74	commands (compess ed ex pr uncompress uccp uustat uux), commands for the
				75	pre-CVS "SCCS" source control system (admin delta get prs rmdel sact sccs unget
				76	val what), fortran support (asa fort77), and batch processing support (batch
				77	qalter 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
				80	iconv lex m4 make nm strings strip tsort yacc), which is outside of toybox's
				81	mandate and should be supplied externally. (Again, some of these may be
				82	revisited later, but not for toybox 1.0.)</p>
				83
				84	<p>Some commands are part of a command shell, and cannot be implemented as
				85	separate executables (alias bg cd command fc fg getopts hash jobs kill read
				86	type ulimit umask unalias wait). These may be revisited as part of a built-in
				87	toybox shell, but are not exported into $PATH via symlinks. (If you fork a
				88	child 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
				91	internationalization support (iconv locale localedef), System V inter-process
				92	communication (ipcrm ipcs), and cross-tty communication from the minicomputer
				93	days (talk mesg write). The "pax" utility was supplanted by tar, "mailx" is
				94	a command line email client, and "lp" submits files for printing to... what
				95	exactly? (cups?) The standard defines crontab but not crond.</p>
				96
				97	<p>Removing all of that leaves the following commands, which toybox should
				98	implement:</p>
				99
				100	<blockquote><b>
				101	<span id=posix>
				102	at awk basename bc cal cat chgrp chmod chown cksum cmp comm cp
				103	csplit cut date dd df diff dirname du echo env expand expr false file find
				104	fold fuser getconf grep head id join kill link ln logger logname ls man
				105	mkdir mkfifo more mv newgrp nice nl nohup od paste patch pathchk printf ps
				106	pwd renice rm rmdir sed sh sleep sort split stty tabs tail tee test time
				107	touch tput tr true tty uname unexpand uniq unlink uudecode uuencode vi wc
				108	who xargs zcat
				109	</span>
				110	</b></blockquote>
				111
Rob Landley	571b070	2012-11-13 16:13:45 -0600	[diff] [blame]	112	<h3><a name=sigh /><a href="#sigh">Linux Standard Base</a></h3>
Rob Landley	8f90d3a	2012-07-21 23:58:40 -0500	[diff] [blame]	113
				114	<p>One attempt to supplement POSIX towards an actual usable system was the
				115	Linux Standard Base. Unfortunately, the quality of this "standard" is
				116	fairly low.</p>
				117
				118	<p>POSIX allowed its standards process to be compromised
				119	by leaving things out, thus allowing IBM mainframes and Windows NT to drive
				120	a truck through the holes and declare themselves compilant. But it means what
				121	they DID standardize tends to be respected.</p>
				122
				123	<p>The Linux Standard Base's failure mode is different, they respond to
				124	pressure by including special-case crap, such as allowing Red Hat to shoehorn
Rob Landley	62f0021	2012-12-06 15:15:30 -0600	[diff] [blame]	125	RPM on the standard even though all sorts of distros (Debian, Slackware, Arch,
				126	Gentoo) don't use it and probably never will. This means anything in the LSB is
Rob Landley	8f90d3a	2012-07-21 23:58:40 -0500	[diff] [blame]	127	at best a suggestion: arbitrary portions of this standard are widely
				128	ignored.</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
				131	utilities</a>:</p>
				132
				133	<blockquote><b>
				134	ar at awk batch bc chfn chsh col cpio crontab df dmesg du echo egrep
				135	fgrep file fuser gettext grep groupadd groupdel groupmod groups
				136	gunzip gzip hostname install install_initd ipcrm ipcs killall lpr ls
				137	lsb_release m4 md5sum mknod mktemp more mount msgfmt newgrp od passwd
				138	patch pidof remove_initd renice sed sendmail seq sh shutdown su sync
				139	tar 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
				143	accomodations for broken tool versions which aren't up to date with the
				144	standard 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>
				145	for examples.)</p>
				146
				147	<p>Since we've already committed to using our own judgement to skip bits of
				148	POSIX, and LSB's "judgement" in this regard is purely bug workarounds to declare
				149	various legacy tool implementations "compliant", this means we're mostly
				150	interested 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
				153	remove_initd aren't present on ubuntu 10.04, lpr is out of scope, and
				154	lsb_release is a distro issue (it's a nice command, but the output of
				155	lsb_release -a is the name and version number of the linux distro you're
				156	running, which toybox doesn't know).</p>
				157
				158	<p>This leaves:</p>
				159
				160	<blockquote><b>
				161	<span id=lsb>
				162	chfn chsh dmesg egrep fgrep groupadd groupdel groupmod groups
				163	gunzip gzip hostname install killall md5sum
				164	mknod mktemp mount passwd pidof sendmail seq shutdown
				165	su sync tar umount useradd userdel usermod zcat
				166	</span>
				167	</b></blockquote>
				168
				169	<hr />
				170	<a name="dev_env">
Rob Landley	571b070	2012-11-13 16:13:45 -0600	[diff] [blame]	171	<h2><a href="#dev_env">Use case: provide a self-hosting development environment</a></h2>
Rob Landley	8f90d3a	2012-07-21 23:58:40 -0500	[diff] [blame]	172
				173	<p>The following commands are enough to build the Aboriginal Linux development
				174	environment, boot it to a shell prompt, and build Linux From Scratch 6.8 under
				175	it. (Aboriginal Linux currently uses BusyBox for this, thus provides a
				176	drop-in test environment for toybox. We install both implementations side
				177	by side, redirecting the symlinks a command at a time until the older
				178	package is no longer used, and can be removed.)</p>
				179
				180	<p>This use case includes running init scripts and other shell scripts, running
				181	configure, make, and install in each package, and providing basic command line
				182	facilities such as a text editor. (It does not include a compiler toolchain or
				183	C library, those are outside the scope of this project.)</p>
				184
				185	<blockquote><b>
				186	<span id=development>
				187	bzcat cat cp dirname echo env patch rmdir sha1sum sleep sort sync
				188	true uname wc which yes zcat
				189	awk basename bzip2 chmod chown cmp cut date dd diff
				190	egrep expr find grep gzip head hostname id install ln ls
				191	mkdir mktemp mv od readlink rm sed sh tail tar touch tr uniq
				192	wget whoami xargs chgrp comm gunzip less logname man split
				193	tee test time bunzip2 chgrp chroot comm cpio dmesg
				194	dnsdomainname ftpd ftpget ftpput gunzip ifconfig init less
				195	logname losetup man mdev mount mountpoint nc pgrep pkill
				196	pwd 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
				201	require bash extensions not present in shells such as busybox ash.
				202	This means that toysh needs to supply several bash extensions _and_ work
				203	when called under the name "bash".</p>
				204
Rob Landley	8fe1814	2014-10-07 14:11:54 -0500	[diff] [blame]	205	<p>The <a href=http://landley.net/aboriginal>Aboriginal Linux</a>
				206	self-bootstrapping build still uses the following busybox commands,
enh	1fb2080	2014-11-24 17:26:09 -0600	[diff] [blame]	207	not yet supplied by toybox:</p>
Rob Landley	8fe1814	2014-10-07 14:11:54 -0500	[diff] [blame]	208
				209	<blockquote><p>
				210	ash awk bunzip2 bzip2 dd diff expr fdisk ftpd ftpget ftpput gunzip
				211	gzip less man pgrep ping pkill ps route sed sh sha512sum tar test tr unxz vi
				212	wget xzcat zcat</p></blockquote>
				213
				214	<p>Many of those are in "pending". Most of the archive commands are needed
				215	because busybox tar doesn't call external versions. The remaining "difficult"
				216	commands are vi, awk, and ash.</p>
				217
Rob Landley	8f90d3a	2012-07-21 23:58:40 -0500	[diff] [blame]	218	<hr />
Rob Landley	571b070	2012-11-13 16:13:45 -0600	[diff] [blame]	219	<h2><a name=android /><a href="#android">Use case: Replacing Android Toolbox</a></h2>
Rob Landley	8f90d3a	2012-07-21 23:58:40 -0500	[diff] [blame]	220
Rob Landley	fdc10c9	2012-10-16 17:09:30 -0500	[diff] [blame]	221	<p>Android has a policy against GPL in userspace, so even though BusyBox
				222	predates Android by many years, they couldn't use it. Instead they grabbed
				223	an old version of ash and implemented their own command line utility set
enh	1fb2080	2014-11-24 17:26:09 -0600	[diff] [blame]	224	called "toolbox". ash was later replaced by
				225	<a href="https://www.mirbsd.org/mksh.htm">mksh</a>; toolbox is being
				226	replaced by toybox.</p>
Rob Landley	8f90d3a	2012-07-21 23:58:40 -0500	[diff] [blame]	227
Rob Landley	fdc10c9	2012-10-16 17:09:30 -0500	[diff] [blame]	228	<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
				230	git repository</a> (this analysis looked at commit 51ccef27cab58).</p>
Rob Landley	8f90d3a	2012-07-21 23:58:40 -0500	[diff] [blame]	231
Rob Landley	fdc10c9	2012-10-16 17:09:30 -0500	[diff] [blame]	232	<h3>Toolbox commands:</h3>
				233
enh	1fb2080	2014-11-24 17:26:09 -0600	[diff] [blame]	234	<p>According to system/core/toolbox/Android.mk the toolbox directory builds
				235	the following commands:</p>
Rob Landley	8f90d3a	2012-07-21 23:58:40 -0500	[diff] [blame]	236
				237	<blockquote><b>
Rob Landley	fdc10c9	2012-10-16 17:09:30 -0500	[diff] [blame]	238	ls mount cat ps kill ln insmod rmmod lsmod ifconfig setconsole
				239	rm mkdir rmdir reboot getevent sendevent date wipe sync umount
				240	start stop notify cmp dmesg route hd dd df getprop setprop watchprops
				241	log sleep renice printenv smd chmod chown newfs_msdos netstat ioctl
				242	mv schedtop top iftop id uptime vmstat nandread ionice touch lsof md5 r
Rob Landley	9a69a92	2013-02-23 18:32:08 -0600	[diff] [blame]	243	cp du grep watchdogd
Rob Landley	8f90d3a	2012-07-21 23:58:40 -0500	[diff] [blame]	244	</b></blockquote>
				245
Rob Landley	fdc10c9	2012-10-16 17:09:30 -0500	[diff] [blame]	246	<p>If selinux is enabled, you also get:</p>
				247	<blockquote><b>
				248	getenforce setenforce chcon restorecon runcon getsebool setsebool load_policy
				249	</b></blockquote>
Rob Landley	8f90d3a	2012-07-21 23:58:40 -0500	[diff] [blame]	250
Rob Landley	fdc10c9	2012-10-16 17:09:30 -0500	[diff] [blame]	251	<h3>Other Android core commands</h3>
				252
enh	1fb2080	2014-11-24 17:26:09 -0600	[diff] [blame]	253	<p>Other than the toolbox directory, the currently interesting
Rob Landley	fdc10c9	2012-10-16 17:09:30 -0500	[diff] [blame]	254	subdirectories in the core repository are fs_mgr, gpttool, init,
enh	1fb2080	2014-11-24 17:26:09 -0600	[diff] [blame]	255	logcat, logwrapper, mkbootimg, netcfg, reboot, and run-as.</p>
Rob Landley	fdc10c9	2012-10-16 17:09:30 -0500	[diff] [blame]	256
				257	<ul>
				258	<li><b>fs_mgr</b> - subset of mount</li>
				259	<li><b>gpttool</b> - subset of fdisk</li>
				260	<li><b>init</b> - Android's PID 1</li>
				261	<li><b>logcat</b> - read android log format</li>
				262	<li><b>logwrapper</b> - redirect stdio to android log</li>
				263	<li><b>mkbootimg</b> - create signed boot image</li>
				264	<li><b>netcfg</b> - network configuration (sucks in libnetutils)</li>
enh	1fb2080	2014-11-24 17:26:09 -0600	[diff] [blame]	265	<li><b>reboot</b> - Android's reboot(1)</li>
Rob Landley	fdc10c9	2012-10-16 17:09:30 -0500	[diff] [blame]	266	<li><b>run-as</b> - subset of sudo</li>
Rob Landley	fdc10c9	2012-10-16 17:09:30 -0500	[diff] [blame]	267	</ul>
				268
				269	<p>Almost all of these reinvent an existing wheel with less functionality and a
				270	different user interface. We may want to provide that interface, but
				271	implementing the full commands (mount, fdisk, init, ifconfig with dhcp,
				272	and sudo) come first.</p>
				273
				274	<p>Although logcat/logwrapper also reinvent a wheel, Android did so in the
				275	kernel and these provide an interface to that.</p>
				276
enh	1fb2080	2014-11-24 17:26:09 -0600	[diff] [blame]	277	<p>Also, gpttool and mkbootimg are install tools.
				278	These aren't a priority if android wants to use its own
Rob Landley	fdc10c9	2012-10-16 17:09:30 -0500	[diff] [blame]	279	bespoke code to install itself.</p>
				280
				281	<h3>Analysis</h3>
				282
				283	<p>For reference, combining everything listed above, we get:</p>
				284
				285	<blockquote><b>
enh	1fb2080	2014-11-24 17:26:09 -0600	[diff] [blame]	286	cat chcon chmod chown cmp cp date dd df dmesg du fs_mgr
Rob Landley	9a69a92	2013-02-23 18:32:08 -0600	[diff] [blame]	287	getenforce
				288	getevent getprop getsebool gpttool grep hd id ifconfig iftop init insmod ioctl
enh	1fb2080	2014-11-24 17:26:09 -0600	[diff] [blame]	289	ionice kill ln load_policy log logcat logwrapper ls lsmod lsof md5
Rob Landley	fdc10c9	2012-10-16 17:09:30 -0500	[diff] [blame]	290	mkbootimg mkdir mount mv nandread netcfg netstat newfs_msdos notify printenv
enh	1fb2080	2014-11-24 17:26:09 -0600	[diff] [blame]	291	ps r reboot renice restorecon rm rmdir rmmod route run-as
				292	runcon schedtop sendevent setconsole setenforce setprop setsebool
				293	sleep smd start stop sync top touch umount uptime vmstat watchdogd
Rob Landley	9a69a92	2013-02-23 18:32:08 -0600	[diff] [blame]	294	watchprops wipe
Rob Landley	fdc10c9	2012-10-16 17:09:30 -0500	[diff] [blame]	295	</b></blockquote>
				296
				297	<p>We may eventually implement all of that, but for toybox 1.0 we need to
enh	1fb2080	2014-11-24 17:26:09 -0600	[diff] [blame]	298	focus a bit. For our first pass, let's ignore selinux,
				299	and grab just logcat and logwrapper from the "core"
Rob Landley	fdc10c9	2012-10-16 17:09:30 -0500	[diff] [blame]	300	commands (since the rest have some full/standard version providing that
				301	functionality, which we can implement a shim interface for later).</p>
				302
				303	<p>This means toybox should implement:</p>
Rob Landley	8f90d3a	2012-07-21 23:58:40 -0500	[diff] [blame]	304	<blockquote><b>
				305	<span id=toolbox>
Rob Landley	9a69a92	2013-02-23 18:32:08 -0600	[diff] [blame]	306	cat chmod chown cmp cp date dd df dmesg du getevent getprop grep hd id ifconfig
				307	iftop insmod ioctl ionice kill ln log logcat logwrapper ls lsmod lsof lsusb md5
				308	mkdir mount mv nandread
Rob Landley	fdc10c9	2012-10-16 17:09:30 -0500	[diff] [blame]	309	netstat newfs_msdos notify printenv ps r reboot renice rm rmdir rmmod route
				310	schedtop sendevent setconsole setprop sleep smd start stop sync top touch
Rob Landley	9a69a92	2013-02-23 18:32:08 -0600	[diff] [blame]	311	umount uptime vmstat watchprops watchdogd wipe
Rob Landley	8f90d3a	2012-07-21 23:58:40 -0500	[diff] [blame]	312	</span>
Rob Landley	c26ca6e	2013-01-31 04:05:56 -0600	[diff] [blame]	313	</b></blockquote>
Rob Landley	fdc10c9	2012-10-16 17:09:30 -0500	[diff] [blame]	314
				315	<p>The following Toolbox commands are already covered in previous
				316	sections of this analysis:</p>
				317
				318	<blockquote><b>
Rob Landley	9a69a92	2013-02-23 18:32:08 -0600	[diff] [blame]	319	cat chmod chown cmp cp date dd df dmesg du grep id ifconfig insmod kill ln ls
				320	lsmod mkdir mount mv ps renice rm rmdir rmmod route sleep sync top touch umount
Rob Landley	fdc10c9	2012-10-16 17:09:30 -0500	[diff] [blame]	321	</b></blockquote>
				322
				323	<p>Which leaves the following commands as new from Toolbox:</p>
				324
				325	<blockquote><b>
				326	getevent getprop hd iftop ioctl ionice log lsof nandread netstat
				327	newfs_msdos notify printenv r reboot schedtop sendevent setconsole
Rob Landley	9a69a92	2013-02-23 18:32:08 -0600	[diff] [blame]	328	setprop smd start stop top uptime vmstat watchprops watchdogd wipe
Rob Landley	8f90d3a	2012-07-21 23:58:40 -0500	[diff] [blame]	329	</b></blockquote>
				330
Rob Landley	a136fa5	2014-12-20 14:58:03 -0600	[diff] [blame]	331	<hr />
				332	<h2><a name=tizen /><a href="#tizen">Use case: Tizen Core</a></h2>
				333
				334	<p>The Tizen project has expressed a desire to eliminate GPLv3 software
				335	from its core system, and is installing toybox as
				336	<a href=https://wiki.tizen.org/wiki/Toybox>part of this process</a>.</p>
				337
				338	<p>They have a fairly long list of new commands they'd like to see in toybox:</p>
				339
				340	<blockquote><b>
				341	<span id=tizen>
				342	arch base64 users dir vdir unexpand shred join csplit
				343	hostid nproc runcon sha224 sha256 sha384 sha512 sha3 mkfs.vfat fsck.vfat
				344	dosfslabel uname stdbuf pinky diff3 sdiff zcmp zdiff zegrep zfgrep zless zmore
				345	</span>
				346	</blockquote>
				347
				348	<p>In addition, they'd like to use several commands currently in pending:</p>
				349
				350	<blockquote><b>
				351	<span id=tizen>
				352	tar diff printf wget rsync fdisk vi less tr test stty fold expr dd
				353	</span>
				354	</b></blockquote>
				355
Rob Landley	9a69a92	2013-02-23 18:32:08 -0600	[diff] [blame]	356	<hr /><a name=klibc />
Rob Landley	934b2d3	2013-05-10 18:54:14 -0500	[diff] [blame]	357	<h2>klibc:</h2>
Rob Landley	9a69a92	2013-02-23 18:32:08 -0600	[diff] [blame]	358
				359	<p>Long ago some kernel developers came up with a project called
				360	<a href=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Klibc>klibc</a>.
				361	After a decade of development it still has no web page or HOWTO,
				362	and nobody's quite sure if the license is BSD or GPL. It inexplicably
				363	<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
				364	replacement.</p>
				365
				366	<p>In addition to a C library even less capable than bionic (obsoleted by
				367	musl), klibc builds a random assortment of executables to run init scripts
				368	with. There's no multiplexer command, these are individual executables:</p>
				369
				370	<blockquote><p>
				371	cat chroot cpio dd dmesg false fixdep fstype gunzip gzip halt ipconfig kill
				372	kinit ln losetup ls minips mkdir mkfifo mknodes
				373	mksyntax mount mv nfsmount nuke pivot_root poweroff readlink reboot resume
				374	run-init sh sha1hash sleep sync true umount uname zcat
				375	</p></blockquote>
				376
				377	<p>To get that list, build klibc according to the instructions (I
				378	<a href=http://landley.net/notes-2013.html#23-01-2013>looked at</a> version
				379	2.0.2 and did cd klibc-*; ln -s /output/of/kernel/make/headers_install
				380	linux; make) then <b>echo $(for i in $(find . -type f); do file $i \| grep -q
				381	executable && basename $i; done \| grep -v '[.]g$' \| sort -u)</b> to find
				382	executables, then eliminated the .so files and .shared duplicates.</p>
				383
				384	<p>Some of those binaries are build-time tools that don't get installed,
				385	which removes mknodes, mksyntax, sha1hash, and fixdep from the list.
				386	(And sha1hash is just an unpolished sha1sum anyway.)</p>
				387
				388	<p>The run-init command is more commonly called switch_root, nuke is just
				389	"rm -rf -- $@", and minips is more commonly called "ps". I'm not doing aliases
				390	for the oddball names.</p>
				391
				392	<p>Yet more stale forks of dash and gzip sucked in here (see "dubious
				393	license terms" above), adding nothing to the other projects we've looked at.
				394	But we still need sh, gunzip, gzip, and zcat to replace this package.</p>
				395
				396	<p>By the time I did the analysis toybox already had cat, chroot, dmesg, false,
				397	kill, ln, losetup, ls, mkdir, mkfifo, readlink, rm, switch_root, sleep, sync,
				398	true, and uname.</p>
				399
				400	<p>The low hanging fruit is cpio, dd, ps, mv, and pivot_root.</p>
				401
				402	<p>The "kinit" command is another gratuitous rename, it's init running as PID 1.
				403	The halt, poweroff, and reboot commands work with it.</p>
				404
				405	<p>I've got mount and umount queued up already, fstype and nfsmount go with
				406	those. (And probably smbmount and p9mount, but this hasn't got one. Those
				407	are all about querying for login credentials, probably workable into the
				408	base mount command.)</p>
				409
				410	<p>The ipconfig command here has a built in dhcp client, so it's ifconfig
				411	and dhcpcd and maybe some other stuff.</p>
				412
				413	<p>The resume command is... weird. It finds a swap partition and reads data
				414	from it into a /proc file, something the kernel is capable of doing itself.
				415	(Even though the klibc author
				416	<a href=http://www.zytor.com/pipermail/klibc/2006-June/001748.html>attempted
				417	to remove</a> that capability from the kernel, current kernel/power/hibernate.c
				418	still parses "resume=" on the command line). And yet various distros seem to
				419	make use of klibc for this>
				420	Given the history of swsusp/hibernate (and
				421	<a href=http://lwn.net/Articles/333007>TuxOnIce</a>
				422	and <a href=http://lwn.net/Articles/242107>kexec jump</a>) I've lost track
				423	of the current state of the art here. Ah, Documentation/power/userland-swsusp.txt
				424	has the API docs, and <a href=http://suspend.sf.net>here's a better
				425	tool</a>...</p>
				426
				427	<p>So the list of things actually in klibc are:</p>
				428
				429	<blockquote><b>
Rob Landley	c166faf	2013-09-01 07:25:37 -0500	[diff] [blame]	430	<span id=klibc_cmd>
Rob Landley	9a69a92	2013-02-23 18:32:08 -0600	[diff] [blame]	431	cat chroot dmesg false kill ln losetup ls mkdir mkfifo readlink rm switch_root
				432	sleep sync true uname
				433
				434	cpio dd ps mv pivot_root
				435	mount nfsmount fstype umount
				436	sh gunzip gzip zcat
				437	kinit halt poweroff reboot
				438	ipconfig
				439	resume
				440	</span>
				441	</b></blockquote>
				442
				443	<hr />
Rob Landley	348a800	2014-04-09 07:57:08 -0500	[diff] [blame]	444	<a name=glibc />
				445	<h2>glibc</h2>
				446
				447	<p>Rather a lot of command line utilities come bundled with glibc:</p>
				448
				449	<blockquote><b>
				450	catchsegv getconf getent iconv iconvconfig ldconfig ldd locale localedef
				451	mtrace nscd rpcent rpcinfo tzselect zdump zic
				452	</b></blockquote>
				453
Isaac Dunham	931425c	2014-04-12 17:26:44 -0500	[diff] [blame]	454	<p>Of those, musl libc only implements ldd.</p>
Rob Landley	cbd7752	2014-04-12 20:39:33 -0500	[diff] [blame]	455
Isaac Dunham	931425c	2014-04-12 17:26:44 -0500	[diff] [blame]	456	<p>catchsegv is a rudimentary debugger, probably out of scope for toybox.</p>
Rob Landley	cbd7752	2014-04-12 20:39:33 -0500	[diff] [blame]	457
Isaac Dunham	931425c	2014-04-12 17:26:44 -0500	[diff] [blame]	458	<p>iconv has been <a href="#susv4">previously discussed</a>.</p>
Rob Landley	cbd7752	2014-04-12 20:39:33 -0500	[diff] [blame]	459
Isaac Dunham	931425c	2014-04-12 17:26:44 -0500	[diff] [blame]	460	<p>iconvconfig is only relevant if iconv is user-configurable; musl uses a
				461	non-configurable iconv.</p>
Rob Landley	cbd7752	2014-04-12 20:39:33 -0500	[diff] [blame]	462
Isaac Dunham	931425c	2014-04-12 17:26:44 -0500	[diff] [blame]	463	<p>getconf is a posix utility which displays several variables from
				464	unistd.h; it probably belongs in the development toolchain.</p>
Rob Landley	cbd7752	2014-04-12 20:39:33 -0500	[diff] [blame]	465
				466	<p>getent handles retrieving entries from passwd-style databases
				467	(in a rather lame way) and is trivially replacable by grep.</p>
				468
Isaac Dunham	931425c	2014-04-12 17:26:44 -0500	[diff] [blame]	469	<p>locale was discussed under <a href=#susv4>posix</a>.
				470	localedef compiles locale definitions, which musl currently does not use.</p>
				471
				472	<p>mtrace is a perl script to use the malloc debugging that glibc has built-in;
				473	this is not relevant for musl, and would necessarily vary with libc. </p>
Rob Landley	cbd7752	2014-04-12 20:39:33 -0500	[diff] [blame]	474
Isaac Dunham	931425c	2014-04-12 17:26:44 -0500	[diff] [blame]	475	<p>nscd is a name service caching daemon, which is not yet relevant for musl.
				476	rpcinfo and rpcent are related to rpc, which musl does not include.</p>
				477
Rob Landley	cbd7752	2014-04-12 20:39:33 -0500	[diff] [blame]	478	<p>The remaining commands involve glibc's bundled timezone database,
				479	which seems to be derived from the <a href=http://www.iana.org/time-zones>IANA
				480	timezone database</a>. Unless we want to maintain our own fork of the
				481	standards body's database like glibc does, these are of no interest,
				482	but for completeness:</p>
				483
Isaac Dunham	931425c	2014-04-12 17:26:44 -0500	[diff] [blame]	484	<p>tzselect outputs a TZ variable correponding to user input.
				485	The documentation does not indicate how to use it in a script, but it seems
				486	that Debian may have done so.
				487	zdump prints current time in each of several timezones, optionally
				488	outputting a great deal of extra information about each timezone.
Rob Landley	cbd7752	2014-04-12 20:39:33 -0500	[diff] [blame]	489	zic converts a description of a timezone to a file in tz format.</p>
Isaac Dunham	931425c	2014-04-12 17:26:44 -0500	[diff] [blame]	490
Rob Landley	cbd7752	2014-04-12 20:39:33 -0500	[diff] [blame]	491	<p>None of glibc's bundled commands are currently of interest to toybox.</p>
Isaac Dunham	931425c	2014-04-12 17:26:44 -0500	[diff] [blame]	492
Isaac Dunham	931425c	2014-04-12 17:26:44 -0500	[diff] [blame]	493	</b></blockquote>
Rob Landley	348a800	2014-04-09 07:57:08 -0500	[diff] [blame]	494
				495	<hr />
Rob Landley	9a69a92	2013-02-23 18:32:08 -0600	[diff] [blame]	496	<a name=sash />
				497	<h2>Stand-Alone Shell</h2>
				498
				499	<p>Wikipedia has <a href=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stand-alone_shell>a good
				500	summary of sash</a>, with links. The original Stand-Alone Shell project reached
				501	a stopping point, and then <a href=http://www.baiti.net/sash>"sash plus
				502	patches"</a> extended it a bit further. The result is a megabyte executable
				503	that provides 40 commands.</p>
				504
				505	<p>Sash is a shell with built-in commands. It doesn't have a multiplexer
				506	command, meaning "sash ls -l" doesn't work (you have to go "sash -c 'ls -l'").
				507	</p>
				508
				509	<p>The list of commands can be obtained via building it and doing
				510	"echo help \| ./sash \| awk '{print $1}' \| sed 's/^-//' \| xargs echo", which
				511	gives us:</p>
				512
				513	<blockquote><b>
				514	alias aliasall ar cd chattr chgrp chmod chown cmp cp chroot dd echo ed exec
				515	exit file find grep gunzip gzip help kill losetup losetup ln ls lsattr mkdir
				516	mknod more mount mv pivot_root printenv prompt pwd quit rm rmdir setenv source
				517	sum sync tar touch umask umount unalias where
				518	</b></blockquote>
				519
				520	<p>Plus sh because it's a shell. A dozen or so commands can only sanely be
				521	implemented as shell builtins (alias aliasall cd exec exit prompt quit setenv
				522	source umask unalias), where is an alias for which, and at triage time toybox
				523	already has chgrp, chmod, chown, cmp, cp, chroot, echo, help, kill, losetup,
				524	ln, ls, mkdir, mknod, printenv, pwd, rm, rmdir, sync, and touch.</p>
				525
				526	<p>This leaves:</p>
				527
				528	<blockquote><b>
				529	<span id=sash_cmd>
				530	ar chattr dd ed file find grep gunzip gzip lsattr more mount mv pivot_root
				531	sh sum tar umount
				532	</span>
				533	</b></blockquote>
				534
				535	<p>(For once, this project doesn't include a fork of gzip, instead
				536	it sucks in -lz from the host.)</p>
				537
				538	<hr />
				539	<a name=sbase />
				540	<h2>sbase:</h2>
				541
				542	<p>It's <a href=http://git.suckless.org/sbase>on suckless</a>. So far it's
				543	implemented:</p>
				544
				545	<blockquote><p>
Rob Landley	c166faf	2013-09-01 07:25:37 -0500	[diff] [blame]	546	<span id=sbase_cmd>
Rob Landley	9a69a92	2013-02-23 18:32:08 -0600	[diff] [blame]	547	basename cat chmod chown cksum cmp cp date dirname echo false fold grep head
				548	kill ln ls mc mkdir mkfifo mv nl nohup pwd rm seq sleep sort tail tee test
				549	touch true tty uname uniq wc yes
				550	</span>
				551	</p></blockquote>
				552
				553	<p>And has a TODO list:</p>
				554
				555	<blockquote><p>
Rob Landley	c166faf	2013-09-01 07:25:37 -0500	[diff] [blame]	556	<span id=sbase_cmd>
Rob Landley	9a69a92	2013-02-23 18:32:08 -0600	[diff] [blame]	557	cal chgrp chvt comm cut df diff du env expand expr id md5sum nice paste
				558	printenv printf readlink rmdir seq sha1sum split sync test tr unexpand unlink
				559	who
				560	</span>
				561	</p></blockquote>
				562
				563	<p>At triage time, of the first list I still need to do: fold grep mc mv nl. Of
				564	the second list: diff expr paste printf split test tr unexpand who.</p>
				565
				566	<hr />
				567	<a name=s6 />
				568	<h2>s6</h2>
				569
				570	<p>The website <a href=http://skarnet.org/software/>skarnet</a> has a bunch
				571	of small utilities as part of something called "s6". This includes the
				572	<a href=http://skarnet.org/software/s6-portable-utils>s6-portabile-utils</a>
				573	and the <a href=http://skarnet.org/software/s6-linux-utils>s6-linux-utils</a>.
				574	</p>
				575
				576	<p>Both packages rely on multiple bespoke external libraries without which
				577	they can't compile. The source is completely uncommented and doesn't wrap at
				578	80 characters. Doing a find for *.c files brings up the following commands:</p>
				579
				580	<blockquote><b>
				581	<span id=s6>
				582	basename cat chmod chown chroot clock cut devd dirname echo env expr false
				583	format-filter freeramdisk grep halt head hiercopy hostname linkname ln
				584	logwatch ls maximumtime memoryhog mkdir mkfifo mount nice nuke pause
				585	pivotchroot poweroff printenv quote quote-filter reboot rename rmrf sleep
				586	sort swapoff swapon sync tail test touch true umount uniquename unquote
				587	unquote-filter update-symlinks
				588	</span>
				589	</b></blockquote>
				590
				591	<p>Triage: memoryhog isn't even listed on the website nor does it have
				592	a documentation file, clock seems like a subset
				593	of date, devd is some sort of netlink wrapper that spawns its command line
				594	every time it gets a message (maybe this is meant to implement part of
				595	udev/mdev?), format-filter is sort of awk's '{print $2}' function split out
				596	into its own command, hiercopy a subset of "cp -r", maximumtime is something
				597	I implemented as a shell script (more/timeout.sh in Aboriginal Linux),
				598	nuke isn't the same as klibc (this one's "kill SIG -1" only with hardwared
				599	SIG options), pause is a program that literally waits to be killed (I
				600	generally sleep 999999999 which is a little over 30 years),
				601	pivotchroot is a subset of switch_root, rmrf is rm -rf...</p>
				602
				603	<p>I see "nuke" resurface, and if "rmrf" wasn't also here I might think
				604	klibc had a point.</b>
				605
				606	<blockquote>
				607	basename cat chmod chown chroot cut dirname echo env expr false
				608	freeramdisk grep halt head hostname linkname ln
				609	logwatch ls mkdir mkfifo mount nice
				610	pivotchroot poweroff printenv quote quote-filter reboot rename sleep
				611	sort swapoff swapon sync tail test touch true umount uniquename unquote
				612	unquote-filter update-symlinks
				613	</blockquote>
				614
				615
				616	<hr />
				617	<a name=nash />
				618	<h2>nash:</h2>
				619
				620	<p>Red Hat's nash was part of its "mkinitrd" package, replacement for a shell
				621	and utilities on the boot floppy back in the 1990's (the same general idea
				622	as BusyBox, developed independently). Red Hat discontinued nash development
				623	in 2010, replacing it with dracut (which collects together existing packages,
				624	including busybox).</p>
				625
				626	<p>I couldn't figure out how to beat source code out of
				627	<a href=http://pkgs.fedoraproject.org/git/mkinitrd>Fedora's current git</a>
				628	repository. The last release version that used it was Fedora Core 12
				629	which 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>
				630	that can be unwound with "rpm2cpio mkinitrd.src.rpm \| cpio -i -d -H newc
				631	--no-absolute-filenames" and in there is a mkinitrd-6.0.93.tar.bz2 which
				632	has the source.</p>
				633
				634	<p>In addition to being a bit like a command shell, the nash man page lists the
				635	following commands:</p>
				636
				637	<blockquote><p>
				638	access echo find losetup mkdevices mkdir mknod mkdmnod mkrootdev mount
				639	pivot_root readlink raidautorun setquiet showlabels sleep switchroot umount
				640	</p></blockquote>
				641
				642	<p>Oddly, the only occurrence of the string pivot_root in the nash source code
				643	is in the man page, the command isn't there. (It seems to have been removed
				644	when the underscoreless switchroot went in.)</p>
				645
				646	<p>A more complete list seems to be the handlers[] array in nash.c:</p>
				647
				648	<blockquote><p>
				649	access buildEnv cat cond cp daemonize dm echo exec exit find kernelopt
				650	loadDrivers loadpolicy mkchardevs mkblktab mkblkdevs mkdir mkdmnod mknod
				651	mkrootdev mount netname network null plymouth hotplug killplug losetup
				652	ln ls raidautorun readlink resume resolveDevice rmparts setDeviceEnv
				653	setquiet setuproot showelfinterp showlabels sleep stabilized status switchroot
				654	umount waitdev
				655	</p></blockquote>
				656
				657	<p>This list is nuts: "plymouth" is an alias for "null" which is basically
				658	"true" (which thie above list doesn't have). Things like buildEnv and
				659	loadDrivers are bespoke Red Hat behavior that might as well be hardwired in
				660	to nash's main() without being called.</p>
				661
				662	<p>Instead of eliminating items
				663	from the list with an explanation for each, I'm just going to cherry pick
				664	a few: the device mapper (dm, raidautorun) is probably interesting,
				665	hotplug (may be obsolete due to kernel changes that now load firmware
				666	directly), and another "resume" ala klibc.</p>
				667
				668	<p>But mostly: I don't care about this one. And neither does Red Hat anymore.</p>
				669
Rob Landley	ca04c7f	2013-03-27 22:34:28 -0500	[diff] [blame]	670	<p>Verdict: ignore</p>
				671
Rob Landley	9a69a92	2013-02-23 18:32:08 -0600	[diff] [blame]	672	<hr />
				673	<a name=beastiebox />
				674	<h2>Beastiebox</h2>
				675
				676	<p>Back in 2008, the BSD guys vented some busybox-envy
				677	<a href=http://beastiebox.sourceforge.net>on sourceforge</a>. Then stopped.
				678	Their repository is still in CVS, hasn't been touched in years, it's a giant
				679	hairball of existing code sucked together. (The web page says the author
				680	is aware of crunchgen, but decided to do this by hand anyway. This is not
				681	a collection of new code, it's a katamari of existing code rolled up in a
				682	ball.)</p>
				683
				684	<p>Combining the set of commands listed on the web page with the set of
				685	man pages in the source gives us:</P>
				686
				687	<blockquote><p>
				688	[ cat chmod cp csh date df disklabel dmesg echo ex fdisk fsck fsck_ffs getty
				689	halt hostname ifconfig init kill less lesskey ln login ls lv mksh more mount
				690	mount_ffs mv pfctl ping poweroff ps reboot rm route sed sh stty sysctl tar test
				691	traceroute umount vi wiconfig
				692	</p></blockquote>
				693
				694	<p>Apparently lv is the missing link ed and vi, copyright 1982-1997 (do not
				695	want), ex is another obsolete vi mode, lesskey is "used to
				696	specify a set of key bindings to be used with less", and csh is a shell they
				697	sucked in, [ is an alias for test. Several more bsd-isms that don't have Linux
				698	equivalents (even in the ubuntu "install this package" search) are
				699	disklabel, fsck_ffs, mount_ffs, and pfctl. And wiconfig is a wavelan interface
				700	network card driver utility. Subtracting all that and the commands toybox
				701	already implements at triage time, we get:</p>
				702
				703	<blockquote><p>
				704	<span id=beastiebox_cmd>
				705	fdisk fsck getty halt ifconfig init kill less mksh more mount mv ping poweroff
				706	ps reboot route sed sh stty sysctl tar test traceroute umount vi
				707	</span>
				708	</p></blockquote>
				709
				710	<p>Not a hugely interesting list, but eh.</p>
				711
Rob Landley	ca04c7f	2013-03-27 22:34:28 -0500	[diff] [blame]	712	<p>Verdict: ignore</p>
				713
				714	<hr />
				715	<a name=BsdBox />
				716	<h2>BsdBox</h2>
				717
				718	<p>Somebody decided to do a <a href=https://wiki.freebsd.org/AdrianChadd/BsdBox>multicall binary for freebsd</a>.</p>
				719
				720	<p>They based it on crunchgen, a tool that glues existing programs together
				721	into an archive and uses the name to execute the right one. It has no
				722	simplification or code sharing benefits whatsoever, it's basically an
				723	archiver that produces executables.</p>
				724
				725	<p>That's about where I stopped reading.</p>
				726
				727	<p>Verdict: ignore.</p>
				728
				729	<hr />
				730	<a name=slowaris />
				731	<h2>OpenSolaris Busybox</h2>
				732
				733	<p>Somebody <a href=http://hub.opensolaris.org/bin/view/Project+busybox/>wrote
				734	a wiki page</a> saying that Busybox for OpenSolaris would be a good idea.</p>
				735
				736	<p>The corresponding "files" tab is an auto-generated stub. The project never
				737	even got as far as suggesting commands to include before Oracle discontinued
				738	OpenSolaris.</p>
				739
				740	<p>Verdict: ignore.</p>
				741
Rob Landley	8f90d3a	2012-07-21 23:58:40 -0500	[diff] [blame]	742	<hr />
				743	<h2>Requests:</h2>
				744
Rob Landley	8fe1814	2014-10-07 14:11:54 -0500	[diff] [blame]	745	<p>The following additional commands have been requested (and often submitted)
				746	by various users:</p>
Rob Landley	8f90d3a	2012-07-21 23:58:40 -0500	[diff] [blame]	747	<blockquote><b>
				748	<span id=request>
Rob Landley	64b6319	2013-12-31 09:01:32 -0600	[diff] [blame]	749	dig freeramdisk getty halt hexdump hwclock klogd modprobe ping ping6 pivot_root
Rob Landley	ca04c7f	2013-03-27 22:34:28 -0500	[diff] [blame]	750	poweroff readahead rev sfdisk sudo syslogd taskset telnet telnetd tracepath
				751	traceroute unzip usleep vconfig zip free login modinfo unshare netcat help w
Rob Landley	64b6319	2013-12-31 09:01:32 -0600	[diff] [blame]	752	ntpd iwconfig iwlist rdate
Rob Landley	7dbb982	2014-02-21 22:24:02 -0600	[diff] [blame]	753	dos2unix unix2dos catv clear
				754	pmap realpath setsid timeout truncate
				755	mkswap swapon swapoff
				756	count oneit fstype
				757	acpi blkid eject pwdx
Rob Landley	8fe1814	2014-10-07 14:11:54 -0500	[diff] [blame]	758	sulogin rfkill bootchartd
				759	arp makedevs sysctl killall5 crond crontab deluser last mkpasswd watch
				760	ipaddr iplink iproute blockdev rpm2cpio arping brctl dumpleases fsck
				761	tcpsvd tftpd
				762	factor fallocate fsfreeze inotifyd lspci nbd-client partprobe strings
Rob Landley	3c99404	2015-01-01 17:37:57 -0600	[diff] [blame^]	763	base64 mix
Rob Landley	8f90d3a	2012-07-21 23:58:40 -0500	[diff] [blame]	764	</span>
				765	</b></blockquote>
				766
				767	<!-- #include "footer.html" -->
				768