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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	348a800	2014-04-09 07:57:08 -0500	[diff] [blame]	36	<li>Miscelaneous: <a href=#klibc>klibc</a>, <a href=#glibc>glibc</a>,
				37	<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]	38	</ul>
				39
Rob Landley	8f90d3a	2012-07-21 23:58:40 -0500	[diff] [blame]	40	<hr />
				41	<a name="standards">
				42	<h2>Use case: standards compliance.</h2>
				43
Rob Landley	571b070	2012-11-13 16:13:45 -0600	[diff] [blame]	44	<h3><a name=susv4 /><a href="#susv4">POSIX-2008/SUSv4</a></h3>
Rob Landley	8f90d3a	2012-07-21 23:58:40 -0500	[diff] [blame]	45	<p>The best standards are the kind that describe reality, rather than
				46	attempting to impose a new one. (I.E. a good standard should document, not
				47	legislate.)</p>
				48
				49	<p>The kind of standards which describe existing reality tend to be approved by
				50	more than one standards body, such ANSI and ISO both approving C. That's why
				51	the IEEE POSIX committee's 2008 standard, the Single Unix Specification version
				52	4, and the Open Group Base Specification edition 7 are all the same standard
				53	from three sources.</p>
				54
Rob Landley	62f0021	2012-12-06 15:15:30 -0600	[diff] [blame]	55	<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]	56	section</a>
				57	of these standards is devoted to the unix command line, and are the best such
				58	standard for our purposes. (My earlier work on BusyBox was implemented with
				59	regard to SUSv3, an earlier version of this standard.)</p>
				60
				61	<h3>Problems with the standard</h3>
				62
				63	<p>Unfortunately, these standards describe a subset of reality, lacking any
				64	mention of commands such as init, login, or mount required to actually boot a
				65	system. It provides ipcrm and ipcs, but not ipcmk, so you can use System V IPC
				66	resources but not create them.</p>
				67
				68	<p>These standards also contain a large number of commands that are
				69	inappropriate for toybox to implement in its 1.0 release. (Perhaps some of
				70	these could be reintroduced in later releases, but not now.)</p>
				71
				72	<p>Starting with the full "utilities" list, we first remove generally obsolete
				73	commands (compess ed ex pr uncompress uccp uustat uux), commands for the
				74	pre-CVS "SCCS" source control system (admin delta get prs rmdel sact sccs unget
				75	val what), fortran support (asa fort77), and batch processing support (batch
				76	qalter qdel qhold qmove qmsg qrerun qrls qselect qsig qstat qsub).</p>
				77
				78	<p>Some commands are for a compiler toolchain (ar c99 cflow ctags cxref gencat
				79	iconv lex m4 make nm strings strip tsort yacc), which is outside of toybox's
				80	mandate and should be supplied externally. (Again, some of these may be
				81	revisited later, but not for toybox 1.0.)</p>
				82
				83	<p>Some commands are part of a command shell, and cannot be implemented as
				84	separate executables (alias bg cd command fc fg getopts hash jobs kill read
				85	type ulimit umask unalias wait). These may be revisited as part of a built-in
				86	toybox shell, but are not exported into $PATH via symlinks. (If you fork a
				87	child process and have it "cd" then exit, you've accomplished nothing.)</p>
				88
				89	<p>A few other commands are judgement calls, providing command-line
				90	internationalization support (iconv locale localedef), System V inter-process
				91	communication (ipcrm ipcs), and cross-tty communication from the minicomputer
				92	days (talk mesg write). The "pax" utility was supplanted by tar, "mailx" is
				93	a command line email client, and "lp" submits files for printing to... what
				94	exactly? (cups?) The standard defines crontab but not crond.</p>
				95
				96	<p>Removing all of that leaves the following commands, which toybox should
				97	implement:</p>
				98
				99	<blockquote><b>
				100	<span id=posix>
				101	at awk basename bc cal cat chgrp chmod chown cksum cmp comm cp
				102	csplit cut date dd df diff dirname du echo env expand expr false file find
				103	fold fuser getconf grep head id join kill link ln logger logname ls man
				104	mkdir mkfifo more mv newgrp nice nl nohup od paste patch pathchk printf ps
				105	pwd renice rm rmdir sed sh sleep sort split stty tabs tail tee test time
				106	touch tput tr true tty uname unexpand uniq unlink uudecode uuencode vi wc
				107	who xargs zcat
				108	</span>
				109	</b></blockquote>
				110
Rob Landley	571b070	2012-11-13 16:13:45 -0600	[diff] [blame]	111	<h3><a name=sigh /><a href="#sigh">Linux Standard Base</a></h3>
Rob Landley	8f90d3a	2012-07-21 23:58:40 -0500	[diff] [blame]	112
				113	<p>One attempt to supplement POSIX towards an actual usable system was the
				114	Linux Standard Base. Unfortunately, the quality of this "standard" is
				115	fairly low.</p>
				116
				117	<p>POSIX allowed its standards process to be compromised
				118	by leaving things out, thus allowing IBM mainframes and Windows NT to drive
				119	a truck through the holes and declare themselves compilant. But it means what
				120	they DID standardize tends to be respected.</p>
				121
				122	<p>The Linux Standard Base's failure mode is different, they respond to
				123	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]	124	RPM on the standard even though all sorts of distros (Debian, Slackware, Arch,
				125	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]	126	at best a suggestion: arbitrary portions of this standard are widely
				127	ignored.</p>
				128
				129	<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
				130	utilities</a>:</p>
				131
				132	<blockquote><b>
				133	ar at awk batch bc chfn chsh col cpio crontab df dmesg du echo egrep
				134	fgrep file fuser gettext grep groupadd groupdel groupmod groups
				135	gunzip gzip hostname install install_initd ipcrm ipcs killall lpr ls
				136	lsb_release m4 md5sum mknod mktemp more mount msgfmt newgrp od passwd
				137	patch pidof remove_initd renice sed sendmail seq sh shutdown su sync
				138	tar umount useradd userdel usermod xargs zcat
				139	</b></blockquote>
				140
				141	<p>Where posix specifies one of those commands, LSB's deltas tend to be
				142	accomodations for broken tool versions which aren't up to date with the
				143	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>
				144	for examples.)</p>
				145
				146	<p>Since we've already committed to using our own judgement to skip bits of
				147	POSIX, and LSB's "judgement" in this regard is purely bug workarounds to declare
				148	various legacy tool implementations "compliant", this means we're mostly
				149	interested in the set of tools that aren't specified in posix at all.</p>
				150
				151	<p>Of these, gettext and msgfmt are internationalization, install_initd and
				152	remove_initd aren't present on ubuntu 10.04, lpr is out of scope, and
				153	lsb_release is a distro issue (it's a nice command, but the output of
				154	lsb_release -a is the name and version number of the linux distro you're
				155	running, which toybox doesn't know).</p>
				156
				157	<p>This leaves:</p>
				158
				159	<blockquote><b>
				160	<span id=lsb>
				161	chfn chsh dmesg egrep fgrep groupadd groupdel groupmod groups
				162	gunzip gzip hostname install killall md5sum
				163	mknod mktemp mount passwd pidof sendmail seq shutdown
				164	su sync tar umount useradd userdel usermod zcat
				165	</span>
				166	</b></blockquote>
				167
				168	<hr />
				169	<a name="dev_env">
Rob Landley	571b070	2012-11-13 16:13:45 -0600	[diff] [blame]	170	<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]	171
				172	<p>The following commands are enough to build the Aboriginal Linux development
				173	environment, boot it to a shell prompt, and build Linux From Scratch 6.8 under
				174	it. (Aboriginal Linux currently uses BusyBox for this, thus provides a
				175	drop-in test environment for toybox. We install both implementations side
				176	by side, redirecting the symlinks a command at a time until the older
				177	package is no longer used, and can be removed.)</p>
				178
				179	<p>This use case includes running init scripts and other shell scripts, running
				180	configure, make, and install in each package, and providing basic command line
				181	facilities such as a text editor. (It does not include a compiler toolchain or
				182	C library, those are outside the scope of this project.)</p>
				183
				184	<blockquote><b>
				185	<span id=development>
				186	bzcat cat cp dirname echo env patch rmdir sha1sum sleep sort sync
				187	true uname wc which yes zcat
				188	awk basename bzip2 chmod chown cmp cut date dd diff
				189	egrep expr find grep gzip head hostname id install ln ls
				190	mkdir mktemp mv od readlink rm sed sh tail tar touch tr uniq
				191	wget whoami xargs chgrp comm gunzip less logname man split
				192	tee test time bunzip2 chgrp chroot comm cpio dmesg
				193	dnsdomainname ftpd ftpget ftpput gunzip ifconfig init less
				194	logname losetup man mdev mount mountpoint nc pgrep pkill
				195	pwd route split stat switch_root tac umount vi
				196	</span>
				197	</b></blockquote>
				198
				199	<p>Note: Aboriginal Linux installs bash 2.05b as #!/bin/sh and its scripts
				200	require bash extensions not present in shells such as busybox ash.
				201	This means that toysh needs to supply several bash extensions _and_ work
				202	when called under the name "bash".</p>
				203
Rob Landley	8fe1814	2014-10-07 14:11:54 -0500	[diff] [blame^]	204	<p>The <a href=http://landley.net/aboriginal>Aboriginal Linux</a>
				205	self-bootstrapping build still uses the following busybox commands,
				206	not yet supplied by toybox:</p.
				207
				208	<blockquote><p>
				209	ash awk bunzip2 bzip2 dd diff expr fdisk ftpd ftpget ftpput gunzip
				210	gzip less man pgrep ping pkill ps route sed sh sha512sum tar test tr unxz vi
				211	wget xzcat zcat</p></blockquote>
				212
				213	<p>Many of those are in "pending". Most of the archive commands are needed
				214	because busybox tar doesn't call external versions. The remaining "difficult"
				215	commands are vi, awk, and ash.</p>
				216
Rob Landley	8f90d3a	2012-07-21 23:58:40 -0500	[diff] [blame]	217	<hr />
Rob Landley	571b070	2012-11-13 16:13:45 -0600	[diff] [blame]	218	<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]	219
Rob Landley	fdc10c9	2012-10-16 17:09:30 -0500	[diff] [blame]	220	<p>Android has a policy against GPL in userspace, so even though BusyBox
				221	predates Android by many years, they couldn't use it. Instead they grabbed
				222	an old version of ash and implemented their own command line utility set
				223	called "toolbox".</p>
Rob Landley	8f90d3a	2012-07-21 23:58:40 -0500	[diff] [blame]	224
Rob Landley	fdc10c9	2012-10-16 17:09:30 -0500	[diff] [blame]	225	<p>Toolbox doesn't have its own repository, instead it's part of Android's
				226	<a href=https://android.googlesource.com/platform/system/core>system/core
				227	git repository</a> (this analysis looked at commit 51ccef27cab58).</p>
Rob Landley	8f90d3a	2012-07-21 23:58:40 -0500	[diff] [blame]	228
Rob Landley	fdc10c9	2012-10-16 17:09:30 -0500	[diff] [blame]	229	<h3>Toolbox commands:</h3>
				230
				231	<p>According to core/toolbox/Android.mk the toolbox directory builds the
				232	following commands:</p>
Rob Landley	8f90d3a	2012-07-21 23:58:40 -0500	[diff] [blame]	233
				234	<blockquote><b>
Rob Landley	fdc10c9	2012-10-16 17:09:30 -0500	[diff] [blame]	235	ls mount cat ps kill ln insmod rmmod lsmod ifconfig setconsole
				236	rm mkdir rmdir reboot getevent sendevent date wipe sync umount
				237	start stop notify cmp dmesg route hd dd df getprop setprop watchprops
				238	log sleep renice printenv smd chmod chown newfs_msdos netstat ioctl
				239	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]	240	cp du grep watchdogd
Rob Landley	8f90d3a	2012-07-21 23:58:40 -0500	[diff] [blame]	241	</b></blockquote>
				242
Rob Landley	fdc10c9	2012-10-16 17:09:30 -0500	[diff] [blame]	243	<p>If selinux is enabled, you also get:</p>
				244	<blockquote><b>
				245	getenforce setenforce chcon restorecon runcon getsebool setsebool load_policy
				246	</b></blockquote>
Rob Landley	8f90d3a	2012-07-21 23:58:40 -0500	[diff] [blame]	247
Rob Landley	fdc10c9	2012-10-16 17:09:30 -0500	[diff] [blame]	248	<p>The Android.mk file also refers to dynarray.c and toolbox.c as library
				249	code. This leaves the following apparently unused C files in toolbox/*.c, each
				250	of which has a command_main() function and seems to implement a standalone
				251	command:</p>
				252
				253	<blockquote><b>
				254	alarm exists lsusb readtty rotatefb setkey syren
				255	</b></blockquote>
				256
				257	<h3>Command shell (ash)</h3>
				258
				259	<p>The core/sh subdirectory contains a fork of ash 1.17, and sucks in
				260	liblinenoise to provide command line history/editing.</p>
				261
				262	<h3>Other Android core commands</h3>
				263
				264	<p>Other than the toolbox and sh directories, the currently interesting
				265	subdirectories in the core repository are fs_mgr, gpttool, init,
				266	logcat, logwrapper, mkbootimg, netcfg, run-as, and sdcard.</p>
				267
				268	<ul>
				269	<li><b>fs_mgr</b> - subset of mount</li>
				270	<li><b>gpttool</b> - subset of fdisk</li>
				271	<li><b>init</b> - Android's PID 1</li>
				272	<li><b>logcat</b> - read android log format</li>
				273	<li><b>logwrapper</b> - redirect stdio to android log</li>
				274	<li><b>mkbootimg</b> - create signed boot image</li>
				275	<li><b>netcfg</b> - network configuration (sucks in libnetutils)</li>
				276	<li><b>run-as</b> - subset of sudo</li>
				277	<li><b>sdcard</b> - FUSE wrapper to squash UID/GID/permissions to what FAT supports.</li>
				278	</ul>
				279
				280	<p>Almost all of these reinvent an existing wheel with less functionality and a
				281	different user interface. We may want to provide that interface, but
				282	implementing the full commands (mount, fdisk, init, ifconfig with dhcp,
				283	and sudo) come first.</p>
				284
				285	<p>Although logcat/logwrapper also reinvent a wheel, Android did so in the
				286	kernel and these provide an interface to that.</p>
				287
				288	<p>Also, gpttool and mkbootimg are install tools, and sdcard looks like a
				289	testing tool. These aren't a priority if android wants to use its own
				290	bespoke code to install itself.</p>
				291
				292	<h3>Analysis</h3>
				293
				294	<p>For reference, combining everything listed above, we get:</p>
				295
				296	<blockquote><b>
Rob Landley	9a69a92	2013-02-23 18:32:08 -0600	[diff] [blame]	297	alarm ash cat chcon chmod chown cmp cp date dd df dmesg du exists fs_mgr
				298	getenforce
				299	getevent getprop getsebool gpttool grep hd id ifconfig iftop init insmod ioctl
Rob Landley	fdc10c9	2012-10-16 17:09:30 -0500	[diff] [blame]	300	ionice kill ln load_policy log logcat logwrapper ls lsmod lsof lsusb md5
				301	mkbootimg mkdir mount mv nandread netcfg netstat newfs_msdos notify printenv
				302	ps r readtty reboot renice restorecon rm rmdir rmmod rotatefb route run-as
				303	runcon schedtop sdcard sendevent setconsole setenforce setkey setprop setsebool
Rob Landley	9a69a92	2013-02-23 18:32:08 -0600	[diff] [blame]	304	sleep smd start stop sync syren top touch umount uptime vmstat watchdogd
				305	watchprops wipe
Rob Landley	fdc10c9	2012-10-16 17:09:30 -0500	[diff] [blame]	306	</b></blockquote>
				307
				308	<p>We may eventually implement all of that, but for toybox 1.0 we need to
				309	focus a bit. For our first pass, let's ignore selinux, strip out the "unlisted"
				310	commands except lsusb, and grab just logcat and logwrapper from the "core"
				311	commands (since the rest have some full/standard version providing that
				312	functionality, which we can implement a shim interface for later).</p>
				313
				314	<p>This means toybox should implement:</p>
Rob Landley	8f90d3a	2012-07-21 23:58:40 -0500	[diff] [blame]	315	<blockquote><b>
				316	<span id=toolbox>
Rob Landley	9a69a92	2013-02-23 18:32:08 -0600	[diff] [blame]	317	cat chmod chown cmp cp date dd df dmesg du getevent getprop grep hd id ifconfig
				318	iftop insmod ioctl ionice kill ln log logcat logwrapper ls lsmod lsof lsusb md5
				319	mkdir mount mv nandread
Rob Landley	fdc10c9	2012-10-16 17:09:30 -0500	[diff] [blame]	320	netstat newfs_msdos notify printenv ps r reboot renice rm rmdir rmmod route
				321	schedtop sendevent setconsole setprop sleep smd start stop sync top touch
Rob Landley	9a69a92	2013-02-23 18:32:08 -0600	[diff] [blame]	322	umount uptime vmstat watchprops watchdogd wipe
Rob Landley	8f90d3a	2012-07-21 23:58:40 -0500	[diff] [blame]	323	</span>
Rob Landley	c26ca6e	2013-01-31 04:05:56 -0600	[diff] [blame]	324	</b></blockquote>
Rob Landley	fdc10c9	2012-10-16 17:09:30 -0500	[diff] [blame]	325
				326	<p>The following Toolbox commands are already covered in previous
				327	sections of this analysis:</p>
				328
				329	<blockquote><b>
Rob Landley	9a69a92	2013-02-23 18:32:08 -0600	[diff] [blame]	330	cat chmod chown cmp cp date dd df dmesg du grep id ifconfig insmod kill ln ls
				331	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]	332	</b></blockquote>
				333
				334	<p>Which leaves the following commands as new from Toolbox:</p>
				335
				336	<blockquote><b>
				337	getevent getprop hd iftop ioctl ionice log lsof nandread netstat
				338	newfs_msdos notify printenv r reboot schedtop sendevent setconsole
Rob Landley	9a69a92	2013-02-23 18:32:08 -0600	[diff] [blame]	339	setprop smd start stop top uptime vmstat watchprops watchdogd wipe
Rob Landley	8f90d3a	2012-07-21 23:58:40 -0500	[diff] [blame]	340	</b></blockquote>
				341
Rob Landley	9a69a92	2013-02-23 18:32:08 -0600	[diff] [blame]	342	<hr /><a name=klibc />
Rob Landley	934b2d3	2013-05-10 18:54:14 -0500	[diff] [blame]	343	<h2>klibc:</h2>
Rob Landley	9a69a92	2013-02-23 18:32:08 -0600	[diff] [blame]	344
				345	<p>Long ago some kernel developers came up with a project called
				346	<a href=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Klibc>klibc</a>.
				347	After a decade of development it still has no web page or HOWTO,
				348	and nobody's quite sure if the license is BSD or GPL. It inexplicably
				349	<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
				350	replacement.</p>
				351
				352	<p>In addition to a C library even less capable than bionic (obsoleted by
				353	musl), klibc builds a random assortment of executables to run init scripts
				354	with. There's no multiplexer command, these are individual executables:</p>
				355
				356	<blockquote><p>
				357	cat chroot cpio dd dmesg false fixdep fstype gunzip gzip halt ipconfig kill
				358	kinit ln losetup ls minips mkdir mkfifo mknodes
				359	mksyntax mount mv nfsmount nuke pivot_root poweroff readlink reboot resume
				360	run-init sh sha1hash sleep sync true umount uname zcat
				361	</p></blockquote>
				362
				363	<p>To get that list, build klibc according to the instructions (I
				364	<a href=http://landley.net/notes-2013.html#23-01-2013>looked at</a> version
				365	2.0.2 and did cd klibc-*; ln -s /output/of/kernel/make/headers_install
				366	linux; make) then <b>echo $(for i in $(find . -type f); do file $i \| grep -q
				367	executable && basename $i; done \| grep -v '[.]g$' \| sort -u)</b> to find
				368	executables, then eliminated the .so files and .shared duplicates.</p>
				369
				370	<p>Some of those binaries are build-time tools that don't get installed,
				371	which removes mknodes, mksyntax, sha1hash, and fixdep from the list.
				372	(And sha1hash is just an unpolished sha1sum anyway.)</p>
				373
				374	<p>The run-init command is more commonly called switch_root, nuke is just
				375	"rm -rf -- $@", and minips is more commonly called "ps". I'm not doing aliases
				376	for the oddball names.</p>
				377
				378	<p>Yet more stale forks of dash and gzip sucked in here (see "dubious
				379	license terms" above), adding nothing to the other projects we've looked at.
				380	But we still need sh, gunzip, gzip, and zcat to replace this package.</p>
				381
				382	<p>By the time I did the analysis toybox already had cat, chroot, dmesg, false,
				383	kill, ln, losetup, ls, mkdir, mkfifo, readlink, rm, switch_root, sleep, sync,
				384	true, and uname.</p>
				385
				386	<p>The low hanging fruit is cpio, dd, ps, mv, and pivot_root.</p>
				387
				388	<p>The "kinit" command is another gratuitous rename, it's init running as PID 1.
				389	The halt, poweroff, and reboot commands work with it.</p>
				390
				391	<p>I've got mount and umount queued up already, fstype and nfsmount go with
				392	those. (And probably smbmount and p9mount, but this hasn't got one. Those
				393	are all about querying for login credentials, probably workable into the
				394	base mount command.)</p>
				395
				396	<p>The ipconfig command here has a built in dhcp client, so it's ifconfig
				397	and dhcpcd and maybe some other stuff.</p>
				398
				399	<p>The resume command is... weird. It finds a swap partition and reads data
				400	from it into a /proc file, something the kernel is capable of doing itself.
				401	(Even though the klibc author
				402	<a href=http://www.zytor.com/pipermail/klibc/2006-June/001748.html>attempted
				403	to remove</a> that capability from the kernel, current kernel/power/hibernate.c
				404	still parses "resume=" on the command line). And yet various distros seem to
				405	make use of klibc for this>
				406	Given the history of swsusp/hibernate (and
				407	<a href=http://lwn.net/Articles/333007>TuxOnIce</a>
				408	and <a href=http://lwn.net/Articles/242107>kexec jump</a>) I've lost track
				409	of the current state of the art here. Ah, Documentation/power/userland-swsusp.txt
				410	has the API docs, and <a href=http://suspend.sf.net>here's a better
				411	tool</a>...</p>
				412
				413	<p>So the list of things actually in klibc are:</p>
				414
				415	<blockquote><b>
Rob Landley	c166faf	2013-09-01 07:25:37 -0500	[diff] [blame]	416	<span id=klibc_cmd>
Rob Landley	9a69a92	2013-02-23 18:32:08 -0600	[diff] [blame]	417	cat chroot dmesg false kill ln losetup ls mkdir mkfifo readlink rm switch_root
				418	sleep sync true uname
				419
				420	cpio dd ps mv pivot_root
				421	mount nfsmount fstype umount
				422	sh gunzip gzip zcat
				423	kinit halt poweroff reboot
				424	ipconfig
				425	resume
				426	</span>
				427	</b></blockquote>
				428
				429	<hr />
Rob Landley	348a800	2014-04-09 07:57:08 -0500	[diff] [blame]	430	<a name=glibc />
				431	<h2>glibc</h2>
				432
				433	<p>Rather a lot of command line utilities come bundled with glibc:</p>
				434
				435	<blockquote><b>
				436	catchsegv getconf getent iconv iconvconfig ldconfig ldd locale localedef
				437	mtrace nscd rpcent rpcinfo tzselect zdump zic
				438	</b></blockquote>
				439
Isaac Dunham	931425c	2014-04-12 17:26:44 -0500	[diff] [blame]	440	<p>Of those, musl libc only implements ldd.</p>
Rob Landley	cbd7752	2014-04-12 20:39:33 -0500	[diff] [blame]	441
Isaac Dunham	931425c	2014-04-12 17:26:44 -0500	[diff] [blame]	442	<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]	443
Isaac Dunham	931425c	2014-04-12 17:26:44 -0500	[diff] [blame]	444	<p>iconv has been <a href="#susv4">previously discussed</a>.</p>
Rob Landley	cbd7752	2014-04-12 20:39:33 -0500	[diff] [blame]	445
Isaac Dunham	931425c	2014-04-12 17:26:44 -0500	[diff] [blame]	446	<p>iconvconfig is only relevant if iconv is user-configurable; musl uses a
				447	non-configurable iconv.</p>
Rob Landley	cbd7752	2014-04-12 20:39:33 -0500	[diff] [blame]	448
Isaac Dunham	931425c	2014-04-12 17:26:44 -0500	[diff] [blame]	449	<p>getconf is a posix utility which displays several variables from
				450	unistd.h; it probably belongs in the development toolchain.</p>
Rob Landley	cbd7752	2014-04-12 20:39:33 -0500	[diff] [blame]	451
				452	<p>getent handles retrieving entries from passwd-style databases
				453	(in a rather lame way) and is trivially replacable by grep.</p>
				454
Isaac Dunham	931425c	2014-04-12 17:26:44 -0500	[diff] [blame]	455	<p>locale was discussed under <a href=#susv4>posix</a>.
				456	localedef compiles locale definitions, which musl currently does not use.</p>
				457
				458	<p>mtrace is a perl script to use the malloc debugging that glibc has built-in;
				459	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]	460
Isaac Dunham	931425c	2014-04-12 17:26:44 -0500	[diff] [blame]	461	<p>nscd is a name service caching daemon, which is not yet relevant for musl.
				462	rpcinfo and rpcent are related to rpc, which musl does not include.</p>
				463
Rob Landley	cbd7752	2014-04-12 20:39:33 -0500	[diff] [blame]	464	<p>The remaining commands involve glibc's bundled timezone database,
				465	which seems to be derived from the <a href=http://www.iana.org/time-zones>IANA
				466	timezone database</a>. Unless we want to maintain our own fork of the
				467	standards body's database like glibc does, these are of no interest,
				468	but for completeness:</p>
				469
Isaac Dunham	931425c	2014-04-12 17:26:44 -0500	[diff] [blame]	470	<p>tzselect outputs a TZ variable correponding to user input.
				471	The documentation does not indicate how to use it in a script, but it seems
				472	that Debian may have done so.
				473	zdump prints current time in each of several timezones, optionally
				474	outputting a great deal of extra information about each timezone.
Rob Landley	cbd7752	2014-04-12 20:39:33 -0500	[diff] [blame]	475	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]	476
Rob Landley	cbd7752	2014-04-12 20:39:33 -0500	[diff] [blame]	477	<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]	478
Isaac Dunham	931425c	2014-04-12 17:26:44 -0500	[diff] [blame]	479	</b></blockquote>
Rob Landley	348a800	2014-04-09 07:57:08 -0500	[diff] [blame]	480
				481	<hr />
Rob Landley	9a69a92	2013-02-23 18:32:08 -0600	[diff] [blame]	482	<a name=sash />
				483	<h2>Stand-Alone Shell</h2>
				484
				485	<p>Wikipedia has <a href=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stand-alone_shell>a good
				486	summary of sash</a>, with links. The original Stand-Alone Shell project reached
				487	a stopping point, and then <a href=http://www.baiti.net/sash>"sash plus
				488	patches"</a> extended it a bit further. The result is a megabyte executable
				489	that provides 40 commands.</p>
				490
				491	<p>Sash is a shell with built-in commands. It doesn't have a multiplexer
				492	command, meaning "sash ls -l" doesn't work (you have to go "sash -c 'ls -l'").
				493	</p>
				494
				495	<p>The list of commands can be obtained via building it and doing
				496	"echo help \| ./sash \| awk '{print $1}' \| sed 's/^-//' \| xargs echo", which
				497	gives us:</p>
				498
				499	<blockquote><b>
				500	alias aliasall ar cd chattr chgrp chmod chown cmp cp chroot dd echo ed exec
				501	exit file find grep gunzip gzip help kill losetup losetup ln ls lsattr mkdir
				502	mknod more mount mv pivot_root printenv prompt pwd quit rm rmdir setenv source
				503	sum sync tar touch umask umount unalias where
				504	</b></blockquote>
				505
				506	<p>Plus sh because it's a shell. A dozen or so commands can only sanely be
				507	implemented as shell builtins (alias aliasall cd exec exit prompt quit setenv
				508	source umask unalias), where is an alias for which, and at triage time toybox
				509	already has chgrp, chmod, chown, cmp, cp, chroot, echo, help, kill, losetup,
				510	ln, ls, mkdir, mknod, printenv, pwd, rm, rmdir, sync, and touch.</p>
				511
				512	<p>This leaves:</p>
				513
				514	<blockquote><b>
				515	<span id=sash_cmd>
				516	ar chattr dd ed file find grep gunzip gzip lsattr more mount mv pivot_root
				517	sh sum tar umount
				518	</span>
				519	</b></blockquote>
				520
				521	<p>(For once, this project doesn't include a fork of gzip, instead
				522	it sucks in -lz from the host.)</p>
				523
				524	<hr />
				525	<a name=sbase />
				526	<h2>sbase:</h2>
				527
				528	<p>It's <a href=http://git.suckless.org/sbase>on suckless</a>. So far it's
				529	implemented:</p>
				530
				531	<blockquote><p>
Rob Landley	c166faf	2013-09-01 07:25:37 -0500	[diff] [blame]	532	<span id=sbase_cmd>
Rob Landley	9a69a92	2013-02-23 18:32:08 -0600	[diff] [blame]	533	basename cat chmod chown cksum cmp cp date dirname echo false fold grep head
				534	kill ln ls mc mkdir mkfifo mv nl nohup pwd rm seq sleep sort tail tee test
				535	touch true tty uname uniq wc yes
				536	</span>
				537	</p></blockquote>
				538
				539	<p>And has a TODO list:</p>
				540
				541	<blockquote><p>
Rob Landley	c166faf	2013-09-01 07:25:37 -0500	[diff] [blame]	542	<span id=sbase_cmd>
Rob Landley	9a69a92	2013-02-23 18:32:08 -0600	[diff] [blame]	543	cal chgrp chvt comm cut df diff du env expand expr id md5sum nice paste
				544	printenv printf readlink rmdir seq sha1sum split sync test tr unexpand unlink
				545	who
				546	</span>
				547	</p></blockquote>
				548
				549	<p>At triage time, of the first list I still need to do: fold grep mc mv nl. Of
				550	the second list: diff expr paste printf split test tr unexpand who.</p>
				551
				552	<hr />
				553	<a name=s6 />
				554	<h2>s6</h2>
				555
				556	<p>The website <a href=http://skarnet.org/software/>skarnet</a> has a bunch
				557	of small utilities as part of something called "s6". This includes the
				558	<a href=http://skarnet.org/software/s6-portable-utils>s6-portabile-utils</a>
				559	and the <a href=http://skarnet.org/software/s6-linux-utils>s6-linux-utils</a>.
				560	</p>
				561
				562	<p>Both packages rely on multiple bespoke external libraries without which
				563	they can't compile. The source is completely uncommented and doesn't wrap at
				564	80 characters. Doing a find for *.c files brings up the following commands:</p>
				565
				566	<blockquote><b>
				567	<span id=s6>
				568	basename cat chmod chown chroot clock cut devd dirname echo env expr false
				569	format-filter freeramdisk grep halt head hiercopy hostname linkname ln
				570	logwatch ls maximumtime memoryhog mkdir mkfifo mount nice nuke pause
				571	pivotchroot poweroff printenv quote quote-filter reboot rename rmrf sleep
				572	sort swapoff swapon sync tail test touch true umount uniquename unquote
				573	unquote-filter update-symlinks
				574	</span>
				575	</b></blockquote>
				576
				577	<p>Triage: memoryhog isn't even listed on the website nor does it have
				578	a documentation file, clock seems like a subset
				579	of date, devd is some sort of netlink wrapper that spawns its command line
				580	every time it gets a message (maybe this is meant to implement part of
				581	udev/mdev?), format-filter is sort of awk's '{print $2}' function split out
				582	into its own command, hiercopy a subset of "cp -r", maximumtime is something
				583	I implemented as a shell script (more/timeout.sh in Aboriginal Linux),
				584	nuke isn't the same as klibc (this one's "kill SIG -1" only with hardwared
				585	SIG options), pause is a program that literally waits to be killed (I
				586	generally sleep 999999999 which is a little over 30 years),
				587	pivotchroot is a subset of switch_root, rmrf is rm -rf...</p>
				588
				589	<p>I see "nuke" resurface, and if "rmrf" wasn't also here I might think
				590	klibc had a point.</b>
				591
				592	<blockquote>
				593	basename cat chmod chown chroot cut dirname echo env expr false
				594	freeramdisk grep halt head hostname linkname ln
				595	logwatch ls mkdir mkfifo mount nice
				596	pivotchroot poweroff printenv quote quote-filter reboot rename sleep
				597	sort swapoff swapon sync tail test touch true umount uniquename unquote
				598	unquote-filter update-symlinks
				599	</blockquote>
				600
				601
				602	<hr />
				603	<a name=nash />
				604	<h2>nash:</h2>
				605
				606	<p>Red Hat's nash was part of its "mkinitrd" package, replacement for a shell
				607	and utilities on the boot floppy back in the 1990's (the same general idea
				608	as BusyBox, developed independently). Red Hat discontinued nash development
				609	in 2010, replacing it with dracut (which collects together existing packages,
				610	including busybox).</p>
				611
				612	<p>I couldn't figure out how to beat source code out of
				613	<a href=http://pkgs.fedoraproject.org/git/mkinitrd>Fedora's current git</a>
				614	repository. The last release version that used it was Fedora Core 12
				615	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>
				616	that can be unwound with "rpm2cpio mkinitrd.src.rpm \| cpio -i -d -H newc
				617	--no-absolute-filenames" and in there is a mkinitrd-6.0.93.tar.bz2 which
				618	has the source.</p>
				619
				620	<p>In addition to being a bit like a command shell, the nash man page lists the
				621	following commands:</p>
				622
				623	<blockquote><p>
				624	access echo find losetup mkdevices mkdir mknod mkdmnod mkrootdev mount
				625	pivot_root readlink raidautorun setquiet showlabels sleep switchroot umount
				626	</p></blockquote>
				627
				628	<p>Oddly, the only occurrence of the string pivot_root in the nash source code
				629	is in the man page, the command isn't there. (It seems to have been removed
				630	when the underscoreless switchroot went in.)</p>
				631
				632	<p>A more complete list seems to be the handlers[] array in nash.c:</p>
				633
				634	<blockquote><p>
				635	access buildEnv cat cond cp daemonize dm echo exec exit find kernelopt
				636	loadDrivers loadpolicy mkchardevs mkblktab mkblkdevs mkdir mkdmnod mknod
				637	mkrootdev mount netname network null plymouth hotplug killplug losetup
				638	ln ls raidautorun readlink resume resolveDevice rmparts setDeviceEnv
				639	setquiet setuproot showelfinterp showlabels sleep stabilized status switchroot
				640	umount waitdev
				641	</p></blockquote>
				642
				643	<p>This list is nuts: "plymouth" is an alias for "null" which is basically
				644	"true" (which thie above list doesn't have). Things like buildEnv and
				645	loadDrivers are bespoke Red Hat behavior that might as well be hardwired in
				646	to nash's main() without being called.</p>
				647
				648	<p>Instead of eliminating items
				649	from the list with an explanation for each, I'm just going to cherry pick
				650	a few: the device mapper (dm, raidautorun) is probably interesting,
				651	hotplug (may be obsolete due to kernel changes that now load firmware
				652	directly), and another "resume" ala klibc.</p>
				653
				654	<p>But mostly: I don't care about this one. And neither does Red Hat anymore.</p>
				655
Rob Landley	ca04c7f	2013-03-27 22:34:28 -0500	[diff] [blame]	656	<p>Verdict: ignore</p>
				657
Rob Landley	9a69a92	2013-02-23 18:32:08 -0600	[diff] [blame]	658	<hr />
				659	<a name=beastiebox />
				660	<h2>Beastiebox</h2>
				661
				662	<p>Back in 2008, the BSD guys vented some busybox-envy
				663	<a href=http://beastiebox.sourceforge.net>on sourceforge</a>. Then stopped.
				664	Their repository is still in CVS, hasn't been touched in years, it's a giant
				665	hairball of existing code sucked together. (The web page says the author
				666	is aware of crunchgen, but decided to do this by hand anyway. This is not
				667	a collection of new code, it's a katamari of existing code rolled up in a
				668	ball.)</p>
				669
				670	<p>Combining the set of commands listed on the web page with the set of
				671	man pages in the source gives us:</P>
				672
				673	<blockquote><p>
				674	[ cat chmod cp csh date df disklabel dmesg echo ex fdisk fsck fsck_ffs getty
				675	halt hostname ifconfig init kill less lesskey ln login ls lv mksh more mount
				676	mount_ffs mv pfctl ping poweroff ps reboot rm route sed sh stty sysctl tar test
				677	traceroute umount vi wiconfig
				678	</p></blockquote>
				679
				680	<p>Apparently lv is the missing link ed and vi, copyright 1982-1997 (do not
				681	want), ex is another obsolete vi mode, lesskey is "used to
				682	specify a set of key bindings to be used with less", and csh is a shell they
				683	sucked in, [ is an alias for test. Several more bsd-isms that don't have Linux
				684	equivalents (even in the ubuntu "install this package" search) are
				685	disklabel, fsck_ffs, mount_ffs, and pfctl. And wiconfig is a wavelan interface
				686	network card driver utility. Subtracting all that and the commands toybox
				687	already implements at triage time, we get:</p>
				688
				689	<blockquote><p>
				690	<span id=beastiebox_cmd>
				691	fdisk fsck getty halt ifconfig init kill less mksh more mount mv ping poweroff
				692	ps reboot route sed sh stty sysctl tar test traceroute umount vi
				693	</span>
				694	</p></blockquote>
				695
				696	<p>Not a hugely interesting list, but eh.</p>
				697
Rob Landley	ca04c7f	2013-03-27 22:34:28 -0500	[diff] [blame]	698	<p>Verdict: ignore</p>
				699
				700	<hr />
				701	<a name=BsdBox />
				702	<h2>BsdBox</h2>
				703
				704	<p>Somebody decided to do a <a href=https://wiki.freebsd.org/AdrianChadd/BsdBox>multicall binary for freebsd</a>.</p>
				705
				706	<p>They based it on crunchgen, a tool that glues existing programs together
				707	into an archive and uses the name to execute the right one. It has no
				708	simplification or code sharing benefits whatsoever, it's basically an
				709	archiver that produces executables.</p>
				710
				711	<p>That's about where I stopped reading.</p>
				712
				713	<p>Verdict: ignore.</p>
				714
				715	<hr />
				716	<a name=slowaris />
				717	<h2>OpenSolaris Busybox</h2>
				718
				719	<p>Somebody <a href=http://hub.opensolaris.org/bin/view/Project+busybox/>wrote
				720	a wiki page</a> saying that Busybox for OpenSolaris would be a good idea.</p>
				721
				722	<p>The corresponding "files" tab is an auto-generated stub. The project never
				723	even got as far as suggesting commands to include before Oracle discontinued
				724	OpenSolaris.</p>
				725
				726	<p>Verdict: ignore.</p>
				727
Rob Landley	8f90d3a	2012-07-21 23:58:40 -0500	[diff] [blame]	728	<hr />
				729	<h2>Requests:</h2>
				730
Rob Landley	8fe1814	2014-10-07 14:11:54 -0500	[diff] [blame^]	731	<p>The following additional commands have been requested (and often submitted)
				732	by various users:</p>
Rob Landley	8f90d3a	2012-07-21 23:58:40 -0500	[diff] [blame]	733	<blockquote><b>
				734	<span id=request>
Rob Landley	64b6319	2013-12-31 09:01:32 -0600	[diff] [blame]	735	dig freeramdisk getty halt hexdump hwclock klogd modprobe ping ping6 pivot_root
Rob Landley	ca04c7f	2013-03-27 22:34:28 -0500	[diff] [blame]	736	poweroff readahead rev sfdisk sudo syslogd taskset telnet telnetd tracepath
				737	traceroute unzip usleep vconfig zip free login modinfo unshare netcat help w
Rob Landley	64b6319	2013-12-31 09:01:32 -0600	[diff] [blame]	738	ntpd iwconfig iwlist rdate
Rob Landley	7dbb982	2014-02-21 22:24:02 -0600	[diff] [blame]	739	dos2unix unix2dos catv clear
				740	pmap realpath setsid timeout truncate
				741	mkswap swapon swapoff
				742	count oneit fstype
				743	acpi blkid eject pwdx
Rob Landley	8fe1814	2014-10-07 14:11:54 -0500	[diff] [blame^]	744	sulogin rfkill bootchartd
				745	arp makedevs sysctl killall5 crond crontab deluser last mkpasswd watch
				746	ipaddr iplink iproute blockdev rpm2cpio arping brctl dumpleases fsck
				747	tcpsvd tftpd
				748	factor fallocate fsfreeze inotifyd lspci nbd-client partprobe strings
				749
Rob Landley	8f90d3a	2012-07-21 23:58:40 -0500	[diff] [blame]	750	</span>
				751	</b></blockquote>
				752
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				754