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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,
Elliott Hughes	8c4fdd8	2015-02-07 19:51:27 -0600	[diff] [blame^]	255	logcat, logwrapper, mkbootimg, 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>
enh	1fb2080	2014-11-24 17:26:09 -0600	[diff] [blame]	264	<li><b>reboot</b> - Android's reboot(1)</li>
Rob Landley	fdc10c9	2012-10-16 17:09:30 -0500	[diff] [blame]	265	<li><b>run-as</b> - subset of sudo</li>
Rob Landley	fdc10c9	2012-10-16 17:09:30 -0500	[diff] [blame]	266	</ul>
				267
				268	<p>Almost all of these reinvent an existing wheel with less functionality and a
				269	different user interface. We may want to provide that interface, but
				270	implementing the full commands (mount, fdisk, init, ifconfig with dhcp,
				271	and sudo) come first.</p>
				272
				273	<p>Although logcat/logwrapper also reinvent a wheel, Android did so in the
				274	kernel and these provide an interface to that.</p>
				275
enh	1fb2080	2014-11-24 17:26:09 -0600	[diff] [blame]	276	<p>Also, gpttool and mkbootimg are install tools.
				277	These aren't a priority if android wants to use its own
Rob Landley	fdc10c9	2012-10-16 17:09:30 -0500	[diff] [blame]	278	bespoke code to install itself.</p>
				279
				280	<h3>Analysis</h3>
				281
				282	<p>For reference, combining everything listed above, we get:</p>
				283
				284	<blockquote><b>
enh	1fb2080	2014-11-24 17:26:09 -0600	[diff] [blame]	285	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]	286	getenforce
				287	getevent getprop getsebool gpttool grep hd id ifconfig iftop init insmod ioctl
enh	1fb2080	2014-11-24 17:26:09 -0600	[diff] [blame]	288	ionice kill ln load_policy log logcat logwrapper ls lsmod lsof md5
Elliott Hughes	8c4fdd8	2015-02-07 19:51:27 -0600	[diff] [blame^]	289	mkbootimg mkdir mount mv nandread netstat newfs_msdos notify printenv
enh	1fb2080	2014-11-24 17:26:09 -0600	[diff] [blame]	290	ps r reboot renice restorecon rm rmdir rmmod route run-as
				291	runcon schedtop sendevent setconsole setenforce setprop setsebool
				292	sleep smd start stop sync top touch umount uptime vmstat watchdogd
Rob Landley	9a69a92	2013-02-23 18:32:08 -0600	[diff] [blame]	293	watchprops wipe
Rob Landley	fdc10c9	2012-10-16 17:09:30 -0500	[diff] [blame]	294	</b></blockquote>
				295
				296	<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]	297	focus a bit. For our first pass, let's ignore selinux,
				298	and grab just logcat and logwrapper from the "core"
Rob Landley	fdc10c9	2012-10-16 17:09:30 -0500	[diff] [blame]	299	commands (since the rest have some full/standard version providing that
				300	functionality, which we can implement a shim interface for later).</p>
				301
				302	<p>This means toybox should implement:</p>
Rob Landley	8f90d3a	2012-07-21 23:58:40 -0500	[diff] [blame]	303	<blockquote><b>
				304	<span id=toolbox>
Rob Landley	9a69a92	2013-02-23 18:32:08 -0600	[diff] [blame]	305	cat chmod chown cmp cp date dd df dmesg du getevent getprop grep hd id ifconfig
				306	iftop insmod ioctl ionice kill ln log logcat logwrapper ls lsmod lsof lsusb md5
				307	mkdir mount mv nandread
Rob Landley	fdc10c9	2012-10-16 17:09:30 -0500	[diff] [blame]	308	netstat newfs_msdos notify printenv ps r reboot renice rm rmdir rmmod route
				309	schedtop sendevent setconsole setprop sleep smd start stop sync top touch
Rob Landley	9a69a92	2013-02-23 18:32:08 -0600	[diff] [blame]	310	umount uptime vmstat watchprops watchdogd wipe
Rob Landley	8f90d3a	2012-07-21 23:58:40 -0500	[diff] [blame]	311	</span>
Rob Landley	c26ca6e	2013-01-31 04:05:56 -0600	[diff] [blame]	312	</b></blockquote>
Rob Landley	fdc10c9	2012-10-16 17:09:30 -0500	[diff] [blame]	313
				314	<p>The following Toolbox commands are already covered in previous
				315	sections of this analysis:</p>
				316
				317	<blockquote><b>
Rob Landley	9a69a92	2013-02-23 18:32:08 -0600	[diff] [blame]	318	cat chmod chown cmp cp date dd df dmesg du grep id ifconfig insmod kill ln ls
				319	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]	320	</b></blockquote>
				321
				322	<p>Which leaves the following commands as new from Toolbox:</p>
				323
				324	<blockquote><b>
				325	getevent getprop hd iftop ioctl ionice log lsof nandread netstat
				326	newfs_msdos notify printenv r reboot schedtop sendevent setconsole
Rob Landley	9a69a92	2013-02-23 18:32:08 -0600	[diff] [blame]	327	setprop smd start stop top uptime vmstat watchprops watchdogd wipe
Rob Landley	8f90d3a	2012-07-21 23:58:40 -0500	[diff] [blame]	328	</b></blockquote>
				329
Rob Landley	a136fa5	2014-12-20 14:58:03 -0600	[diff] [blame]	330	<hr />
				331	<h2><a name=tizen /><a href="#tizen">Use case: Tizen Core</a></h2>
				332
				333	<p>The Tizen project has expressed a desire to eliminate GPLv3 software
				334	from its core system, and is installing toybox as
				335	<a href=https://wiki.tizen.org/wiki/Toybox>part of this process</a>.</p>
				336
				337	<p>They have a fairly long list of new commands they'd like to see in toybox:</p>
				338
				339	<blockquote><b>
				340	<span id=tizen>
				341	arch base64 users dir vdir unexpand shred join csplit
				342	hostid nproc runcon sha224 sha256 sha384 sha512 sha3 mkfs.vfat fsck.vfat
				343	dosfslabel uname stdbuf pinky diff3 sdiff zcmp zdiff zegrep zfgrep zless zmore
				344	</span>
				345	</blockquote>
				346
				347	<p>In addition, they'd like to use several commands currently in pending:</p>
				348
				349	<blockquote><b>
				350	<span id=tizen>
				351	tar diff printf wget rsync fdisk vi less tr test stty fold expr dd
				352	</span>
				353	</b></blockquote>
				354
Rob Landley	9a69a92	2013-02-23 18:32:08 -0600	[diff] [blame]	355	<hr /><a name=klibc />
Rob Landley	934b2d3	2013-05-10 18:54:14 -0500	[diff] [blame]	356	<h2>klibc:</h2>
Rob Landley	9a69a92	2013-02-23 18:32:08 -0600	[diff] [blame]	357
				358	<p>Long ago some kernel developers came up with a project called
				359	<a href=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Klibc>klibc</a>.
				360	After a decade of development it still has no web page or HOWTO,
				361	and nobody's quite sure if the license is BSD or GPL. It inexplicably
				362	<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
				363	replacement.</p>
				364
				365	<p>In addition to a C library even less capable than bionic (obsoleted by
				366	musl), klibc builds a random assortment of executables to run init scripts
				367	with. There's no multiplexer command, these are individual executables:</p>
				368
				369	<blockquote><p>
				370	cat chroot cpio dd dmesg false fixdep fstype gunzip gzip halt ipconfig kill
				371	kinit ln losetup ls minips mkdir mkfifo mknodes
				372	mksyntax mount mv nfsmount nuke pivot_root poweroff readlink reboot resume
				373	run-init sh sha1hash sleep sync true umount uname zcat
				374	</p></blockquote>
				375
				376	<p>To get that list, build klibc according to the instructions (I
				377	<a href=http://landley.net/notes-2013.html#23-01-2013>looked at</a> version
				378	2.0.2 and did cd klibc-*; ln -s /output/of/kernel/make/headers_install
				379	linux; make) then <b>echo $(for i in $(find . -type f); do file $i \| grep -q
				380	executable && basename $i; done \| grep -v '[.]g$' \| sort -u)</b> to find
				381	executables, then eliminated the .so files and .shared duplicates.</p>
				382
				383	<p>Some of those binaries are build-time tools that don't get installed,
				384	which removes mknodes, mksyntax, sha1hash, and fixdep from the list.
				385	(And sha1hash is just an unpolished sha1sum anyway.)</p>
				386
				387	<p>The run-init command is more commonly called switch_root, nuke is just
				388	"rm -rf -- $@", and minips is more commonly called "ps". I'm not doing aliases
				389	for the oddball names.</p>
				390
				391	<p>Yet more stale forks of dash and gzip sucked in here (see "dubious
				392	license terms" above), adding nothing to the other projects we've looked at.
				393	But we still need sh, gunzip, gzip, and zcat to replace this package.</p>
				394
				395	<p>By the time I did the analysis toybox already had cat, chroot, dmesg, false,
				396	kill, ln, losetup, ls, mkdir, mkfifo, readlink, rm, switch_root, sleep, sync,
				397	true, and uname.</p>
				398
				399	<p>The low hanging fruit is cpio, dd, ps, mv, and pivot_root.</p>
				400
				401	<p>The "kinit" command is another gratuitous rename, it's init running as PID 1.
				402	The halt, poweroff, and reboot commands work with it.</p>
				403
				404	<p>I've got mount and umount queued up already, fstype and nfsmount go with
				405	those. (And probably smbmount and p9mount, but this hasn't got one. Those
				406	are all about querying for login credentials, probably workable into the
				407	base mount command.)</p>
				408
				409	<p>The ipconfig command here has a built in dhcp client, so it's ifconfig
				410	and dhcpcd and maybe some other stuff.</p>
				411
				412	<p>The resume command is... weird. It finds a swap partition and reads data
				413	from it into a /proc file, something the kernel is capable of doing itself.
				414	(Even though the klibc author
				415	<a href=http://www.zytor.com/pipermail/klibc/2006-June/001748.html>attempted
				416	to remove</a> that capability from the kernel, current kernel/power/hibernate.c
				417	still parses "resume=" on the command line). And yet various distros seem to
				418	make use of klibc for this>
				419	Given the history of swsusp/hibernate (and
				420	<a href=http://lwn.net/Articles/333007>TuxOnIce</a>
				421	and <a href=http://lwn.net/Articles/242107>kexec jump</a>) I've lost track
				422	of the current state of the art here. Ah, Documentation/power/userland-swsusp.txt
				423	has the API docs, and <a href=http://suspend.sf.net>here's a better
				424	tool</a>...</p>
				425
				426	<p>So the list of things actually in klibc are:</p>
				427
				428	<blockquote><b>
Rob Landley	c166faf	2013-09-01 07:25:37 -0500	[diff] [blame]	429	<span id=klibc_cmd>
Rob Landley	9a69a92	2013-02-23 18:32:08 -0600	[diff] [blame]	430	cat chroot dmesg false kill ln losetup ls mkdir mkfifo readlink rm switch_root
				431	sleep sync true uname
				432
				433	cpio dd ps mv pivot_root
				434	mount nfsmount fstype umount
				435	sh gunzip gzip zcat
				436	kinit halt poweroff reboot
				437	ipconfig
				438	resume
				439	</span>
				440	</b></blockquote>
				441
				442	<hr />
Rob Landley	348a800	2014-04-09 07:57:08 -0500	[diff] [blame]	443	<a name=glibc />
				444	<h2>glibc</h2>
				445
				446	<p>Rather a lot of command line utilities come bundled with glibc:</p>
				447
				448	<blockquote><b>
				449	catchsegv getconf getent iconv iconvconfig ldconfig ldd locale localedef
				450	mtrace nscd rpcent rpcinfo tzselect zdump zic
				451	</b></blockquote>
				452
Isaac Dunham	931425c	2014-04-12 17:26:44 -0500	[diff] [blame]	453	<p>Of those, musl libc only implements ldd.</p>
Rob Landley	cbd7752	2014-04-12 20:39:33 -0500	[diff] [blame]	454
Isaac Dunham	931425c	2014-04-12 17:26:44 -0500	[diff] [blame]	455	<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]	456
Isaac Dunham	931425c	2014-04-12 17:26:44 -0500	[diff] [blame]	457	<p>iconv has been <a href="#susv4">previously discussed</a>.</p>
Rob Landley	cbd7752	2014-04-12 20:39:33 -0500	[diff] [blame]	458
Isaac Dunham	931425c	2014-04-12 17:26:44 -0500	[diff] [blame]	459	<p>iconvconfig is only relevant if iconv is user-configurable; musl uses a
				460	non-configurable iconv.</p>
Rob Landley	cbd7752	2014-04-12 20:39:33 -0500	[diff] [blame]	461
Isaac Dunham	931425c	2014-04-12 17:26:44 -0500	[diff] [blame]	462	<p>getconf is a posix utility which displays several variables from
				463	unistd.h; it probably belongs in the development toolchain.</p>
Rob Landley	cbd7752	2014-04-12 20:39:33 -0500	[diff] [blame]	464
				465	<p>getent handles retrieving entries from passwd-style databases
				466	(in a rather lame way) and is trivially replacable by grep.</p>
				467
Isaac Dunham	931425c	2014-04-12 17:26:44 -0500	[diff] [blame]	468	<p>locale was discussed under <a href=#susv4>posix</a>.
				469	localedef compiles locale definitions, which musl currently does not use.</p>
				470
				471	<p>mtrace is a perl script to use the malloc debugging that glibc has built-in;
				472	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]	473
Isaac Dunham	931425c	2014-04-12 17:26:44 -0500	[diff] [blame]	474	<p>nscd is a name service caching daemon, which is not yet relevant for musl.
				475	rpcinfo and rpcent are related to rpc, which musl does not include.</p>
				476
Rob Landley	cbd7752	2014-04-12 20:39:33 -0500	[diff] [blame]	477	<p>The remaining commands involve glibc's bundled timezone database,
				478	which seems to be derived from the <a href=http://www.iana.org/time-zones>IANA
				479	timezone database</a>. Unless we want to maintain our own fork of the
				480	standards body's database like glibc does, these are of no interest,
				481	but for completeness:</p>
				482
Isaac Dunham	931425c	2014-04-12 17:26:44 -0500	[diff] [blame]	483	<p>tzselect outputs a TZ variable correponding to user input.
				484	The documentation does not indicate how to use it in a script, but it seems
				485	that Debian may have done so.
				486	zdump prints current time in each of several timezones, optionally
				487	outputting a great deal of extra information about each timezone.
Rob Landley	cbd7752	2014-04-12 20:39:33 -0500	[diff] [blame]	488	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]	489
Rob Landley	cbd7752	2014-04-12 20:39:33 -0500	[diff] [blame]	490	<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]	491
Isaac Dunham	931425c	2014-04-12 17:26:44 -0500	[diff] [blame]	492	</b></blockquote>
Rob Landley	348a800	2014-04-09 07:57:08 -0500	[diff] [blame]	493
				494	<hr />
Rob Landley	9a69a92	2013-02-23 18:32:08 -0600	[diff] [blame]	495	<a name=sash />
				496	<h2>Stand-Alone Shell</h2>
				497
				498	<p>Wikipedia has <a href=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stand-alone_shell>a good
				499	summary of sash</a>, with links. The original Stand-Alone Shell project reached
				500	a stopping point, and then <a href=http://www.baiti.net/sash>"sash plus
				501	patches"</a> extended it a bit further. The result is a megabyte executable
				502	that provides 40 commands.</p>
				503
				504	<p>Sash is a shell with built-in commands. It doesn't have a multiplexer
				505	command, meaning "sash ls -l" doesn't work (you have to go "sash -c 'ls -l'").
				506	</p>
				507
				508	<p>The list of commands can be obtained via building it and doing
				509	"echo help \| ./sash \| awk '{print $1}' \| sed 's/^-//' \| xargs echo", which
				510	gives us:</p>
				511
				512	<blockquote><b>
				513	alias aliasall ar cd chattr chgrp chmod chown cmp cp chroot dd echo ed exec
				514	exit file find grep gunzip gzip help kill losetup losetup ln ls lsattr mkdir
				515	mknod more mount mv pivot_root printenv prompt pwd quit rm rmdir setenv source
				516	sum sync tar touch umask umount unalias where
				517	</b></blockquote>
				518
				519	<p>Plus sh because it's a shell. A dozen or so commands can only sanely be
				520	implemented as shell builtins (alias aliasall cd exec exit prompt quit setenv
				521	source umask unalias), where is an alias for which, and at triage time toybox
				522	already has chgrp, chmod, chown, cmp, cp, chroot, echo, help, kill, losetup,
				523	ln, ls, mkdir, mknod, printenv, pwd, rm, rmdir, sync, and touch.</p>
				524
				525	<p>This leaves:</p>
				526
				527	<blockquote><b>
				528	<span id=sash_cmd>
				529	ar chattr dd ed file find grep gunzip gzip lsattr more mount mv pivot_root
				530	sh sum tar umount
				531	</span>
				532	</b></blockquote>
				533
				534	<p>(For once, this project doesn't include a fork of gzip, instead
				535	it sucks in -lz from the host.)</p>
				536
				537	<hr />
				538	<a name=sbase />
				539	<h2>sbase:</h2>
				540
				541	<p>It's <a href=http://git.suckless.org/sbase>on suckless</a>. So far it's
				542	implemented:</p>
				543
				544	<blockquote><p>
Rob Landley	c166faf	2013-09-01 07:25:37 -0500	[diff] [blame]	545	<span id=sbase_cmd>
Rob Landley	9a69a92	2013-02-23 18:32:08 -0600	[diff] [blame]	546	basename cat chmod chown cksum cmp cp date dirname echo false fold grep head
				547	kill ln ls mc mkdir mkfifo mv nl nohup pwd rm seq sleep sort tail tee test
				548	touch true tty uname uniq wc yes
				549	</span>
				550	</p></blockquote>
				551
				552	<p>And has a TODO list:</p>
				553
				554	<blockquote><p>
Rob Landley	c166faf	2013-09-01 07:25:37 -0500	[diff] [blame]	555	<span id=sbase_cmd>
Rob Landley	9a69a92	2013-02-23 18:32:08 -0600	[diff] [blame]	556	cal chgrp chvt comm cut df diff du env expand expr id md5sum nice paste
				557	printenv printf readlink rmdir seq sha1sum split sync test tr unexpand unlink
				558	who
				559	</span>
				560	</p></blockquote>
				561
				562	<p>At triage time, of the first list I still need to do: fold grep mc mv nl. Of
				563	the second list: diff expr paste printf split test tr unexpand who.</p>
				564
				565	<hr />
				566	<a name=s6 />
				567	<h2>s6</h2>
				568
				569	<p>The website <a href=http://skarnet.org/software/>skarnet</a> has a bunch
				570	of small utilities as part of something called "s6". This includes the
				571	<a href=http://skarnet.org/software/s6-portable-utils>s6-portabile-utils</a>
				572	and the <a href=http://skarnet.org/software/s6-linux-utils>s6-linux-utils</a>.
				573	</p>
				574
				575	<p>Both packages rely on multiple bespoke external libraries without which
				576	they can't compile. The source is completely uncommented and doesn't wrap at
				577	80 characters. Doing a find for *.c files brings up the following commands:</p>
				578
				579	<blockquote><b>
				580	<span id=s6>
				581	basename cat chmod chown chroot clock cut devd dirname echo env expr false
				582	format-filter freeramdisk grep halt head hiercopy hostname linkname ln
				583	logwatch ls maximumtime memoryhog mkdir mkfifo mount nice nuke pause
				584	pivotchroot poweroff printenv quote quote-filter reboot rename rmrf sleep
				585	sort swapoff swapon sync tail test touch true umount uniquename unquote
				586	unquote-filter update-symlinks
				587	</span>
				588	</b></blockquote>
				589
				590	<p>Triage: memoryhog isn't even listed on the website nor does it have
				591	a documentation file, clock seems like a subset
				592	of date, devd is some sort of netlink wrapper that spawns its command line
				593	every time it gets a message (maybe this is meant to implement part of
				594	udev/mdev?), format-filter is sort of awk's '{print $2}' function split out
				595	into its own command, hiercopy a subset of "cp -r", maximumtime is something
				596	I implemented as a shell script (more/timeout.sh in Aboriginal Linux),
				597	nuke isn't the same as klibc (this one's "kill SIG -1" only with hardwared
				598	SIG options), pause is a program that literally waits to be killed (I
				599	generally sleep 999999999 which is a little over 30 years),
				600	pivotchroot is a subset of switch_root, rmrf is rm -rf...</p>
				601
				602	<p>I see "nuke" resurface, and if "rmrf" wasn't also here I might think
				603	klibc had a point.</b>
				604
				605	<blockquote>
				606	basename cat chmod chown chroot cut dirname echo env expr false
				607	freeramdisk grep halt head hostname linkname ln
				608	logwatch ls mkdir mkfifo mount nice
				609	pivotchroot poweroff printenv quote quote-filter reboot rename sleep
				610	sort swapoff swapon sync tail test touch true umount uniquename unquote
				611	unquote-filter update-symlinks
				612	</blockquote>
				613
				614
				615	<hr />
				616	<a name=nash />
				617	<h2>nash:</h2>
				618
				619	<p>Red Hat's nash was part of its "mkinitrd" package, replacement for a shell
				620	and utilities on the boot floppy back in the 1990's (the same general idea
				621	as BusyBox, developed independently). Red Hat discontinued nash development
				622	in 2010, replacing it with dracut (which collects together existing packages,
				623	including busybox).</p>
				624
				625	<p>I couldn't figure out how to beat source code out of
				626	<a href=http://pkgs.fedoraproject.org/git/mkinitrd>Fedora's current git</a>
				627	repository. The last release version that used it was Fedora Core 12
				628	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>
				629	that can be unwound with "rpm2cpio mkinitrd.src.rpm \| cpio -i -d -H newc
				630	--no-absolute-filenames" and in there is a mkinitrd-6.0.93.tar.bz2 which
				631	has the source.</p>
				632
				633	<p>In addition to being a bit like a command shell, the nash man page lists the
				634	following commands:</p>
				635
				636	<blockquote><p>
				637	access echo find losetup mkdevices mkdir mknod mkdmnod mkrootdev mount
				638	pivot_root readlink raidautorun setquiet showlabels sleep switchroot umount
				639	</p></blockquote>
				640
				641	<p>Oddly, the only occurrence of the string pivot_root in the nash source code
				642	is in the man page, the command isn't there. (It seems to have been removed
				643	when the underscoreless switchroot went in.)</p>
				644
				645	<p>A more complete list seems to be the handlers[] array in nash.c:</p>
				646
				647	<blockquote><p>
				648	access buildEnv cat cond cp daemonize dm echo exec exit find kernelopt
				649	loadDrivers loadpolicy mkchardevs mkblktab mkblkdevs mkdir mkdmnod mknod
				650	mkrootdev mount netname network null plymouth hotplug killplug losetup
				651	ln ls raidautorun readlink resume resolveDevice rmparts setDeviceEnv
				652	setquiet setuproot showelfinterp showlabels sleep stabilized status switchroot
				653	umount waitdev
				654	</p></blockquote>
				655
				656	<p>This list is nuts: "plymouth" is an alias for "null" which is basically
				657	"true" (which thie above list doesn't have). Things like buildEnv and
				658	loadDrivers are bespoke Red Hat behavior that might as well be hardwired in
				659	to nash's main() without being called.</p>
				660
				661	<p>Instead of eliminating items
				662	from the list with an explanation for each, I'm just going to cherry pick
				663	a few: the device mapper (dm, raidautorun) is probably interesting,
				664	hotplug (may be obsolete due to kernel changes that now load firmware
				665	directly), and another "resume" ala klibc.</p>
				666
				667	<p>But mostly: I don't care about this one. And neither does Red Hat anymore.</p>
				668
Rob Landley	ca04c7f	2013-03-27 22:34:28 -0500	[diff] [blame]	669	<p>Verdict: ignore</p>
				670
Rob Landley	9a69a92	2013-02-23 18:32:08 -0600	[diff] [blame]	671	<hr />
				672	<a name=beastiebox />
				673	<h2>Beastiebox</h2>
				674
				675	<p>Back in 2008, the BSD guys vented some busybox-envy
				676	<a href=http://beastiebox.sourceforge.net>on sourceforge</a>. Then stopped.
				677	Their repository is still in CVS, hasn't been touched in years, it's a giant
				678	hairball of existing code sucked together. (The web page says the author
				679	is aware of crunchgen, but decided to do this by hand anyway. This is not
				680	a collection of new code, it's a katamari of existing code rolled up in a
				681	ball.)</p>
				682
				683	<p>Combining the set of commands listed on the web page with the set of
				684	man pages in the source gives us:</P>
				685
				686	<blockquote><p>
				687	[ cat chmod cp csh date df disklabel dmesg echo ex fdisk fsck fsck_ffs getty
				688	halt hostname ifconfig init kill less lesskey ln login ls lv mksh more mount
				689	mount_ffs mv pfctl ping poweroff ps reboot rm route sed sh stty sysctl tar test
				690	traceroute umount vi wiconfig
				691	</p></blockquote>
				692
				693	<p>Apparently lv is the missing link ed and vi, copyright 1982-1997 (do not
				694	want), ex is another obsolete vi mode, lesskey is "used to
				695	specify a set of key bindings to be used with less", and csh is a shell they
				696	sucked in, [ is an alias for test. Several more bsd-isms that don't have Linux
				697	equivalents (even in the ubuntu "install this package" search) are
				698	disklabel, fsck_ffs, mount_ffs, and pfctl. And wiconfig is a wavelan interface
				699	network card driver utility. Subtracting all that and the commands toybox
				700	already implements at triage time, we get:</p>
				701
				702	<blockquote><p>
				703	<span id=beastiebox_cmd>
				704	fdisk fsck getty halt ifconfig init kill less mksh more mount mv ping poweroff
				705	ps reboot route sed sh stty sysctl tar test traceroute umount vi
				706	</span>
				707	</p></blockquote>
				708
				709	<p>Not a hugely interesting list, but eh.</p>
				710
Rob Landley	ca04c7f	2013-03-27 22:34:28 -0500	[diff] [blame]	711	<p>Verdict: ignore</p>
				712
				713	<hr />
				714	<a name=BsdBox />
				715	<h2>BsdBox</h2>
				716
				717	<p>Somebody decided to do a <a href=https://wiki.freebsd.org/AdrianChadd/BsdBox>multicall binary for freebsd</a>.</p>
				718
				719	<p>They based it on crunchgen, a tool that glues existing programs together
				720	into an archive and uses the name to execute the right one. It has no
				721	simplification or code sharing benefits whatsoever, it's basically an
				722	archiver that produces executables.</p>
				723
				724	<p>That's about where I stopped reading.</p>
				725
				726	<p>Verdict: ignore.</p>
				727
				728	<hr />
				729	<a name=slowaris />
				730	<h2>OpenSolaris Busybox</h2>
				731
				732	<p>Somebody <a href=http://hub.opensolaris.org/bin/view/Project+busybox/>wrote
				733	a wiki page</a> saying that Busybox for OpenSolaris would be a good idea.</p>
				734
				735	<p>The corresponding "files" tab is an auto-generated stub. The project never
				736	even got as far as suggesting commands to include before Oracle discontinued
				737	OpenSolaris.</p>
				738
				739	<p>Verdict: ignore.</p>
				740
Rob Landley	8f90d3a	2012-07-21 23:58:40 -0500	[diff] [blame]	741	<hr />
				742	<h2>Requests:</h2>
				743
Rob Landley	8fe1814	2014-10-07 14:11:54 -0500	[diff] [blame]	744	<p>The following additional commands have been requested (and often submitted)
				745	by various users:</p>
Rob Landley	8f90d3a	2012-07-21 23:58:40 -0500	[diff] [blame]	746	<blockquote><b>
				747	<span id=request>
Rob Landley	64b6319	2013-12-31 09:01:32 -0600	[diff] [blame]	748	dig freeramdisk getty halt hexdump hwclock klogd modprobe ping ping6 pivot_root
Rob Landley	ca04c7f	2013-03-27 22:34:28 -0500	[diff] [blame]	749	poweroff readahead rev sfdisk sudo syslogd taskset telnet telnetd tracepath
				750	traceroute unzip usleep vconfig zip free login modinfo unshare netcat help w
Rob Landley	64b6319	2013-12-31 09:01:32 -0600	[diff] [blame]	751	ntpd iwconfig iwlist rdate
Rob Landley	7dbb982	2014-02-21 22:24:02 -0600	[diff] [blame]	752	dos2unix unix2dos catv clear
				753	pmap realpath setsid timeout truncate
				754	mkswap swapon swapoff
				755	count oneit fstype
				756	acpi blkid eject pwdx
Rob Landley	8fe1814	2014-10-07 14:11:54 -0500	[diff] [blame]	757	sulogin rfkill bootchartd
				758	arp makedevs sysctl killall5 crond crontab deluser last mkpasswd watch
				759	ipaddr iplink iproute blockdev rpm2cpio arping brctl dumpleases fsck
				760	tcpsvd tftpd
				761	factor fallocate fsfreeze inotifyd lspci nbd-client partprobe strings
Rob Landley	3c99404	2015-01-01 17:37:57 -0600	[diff] [blame]	762	base64 mix
Rob Landley	8f90d3a	2012-07-21 23:58:40 -0500	[diff] [blame]	763	</span>
				764	</b></blockquote>
				765
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				767