| Rob Landley | 349ff52 | 2014-01-04 13:09:42 -0600 | [diff] [blame] | 1 | <html><head><title>toybox: old news</title> |
| Rob Landley | aba5170 | 2012-08-26 16:33:06 -0500 | [diff] [blame] | 2 | <!--#include file="header.html" --> |
| 3 | |
| 4 | <h2>Old News</h2> |
| 5 | |
| 6 | <p>This project <a href=http://lists.busybox.net/pipermail/busybox/2006-September/024794.html>started in 2006</a>, got mothballed in 2009 |
| 7 | <a href=http://landley.net/notes-2009.html#18-06-2009>for</a> |
| 8 | <a href=http://landley.net/notes-2011.html#31-03-2011>various</a> |
| 9 | <a href=http://landley.net/notes-2011.html#08-06-2011>reasons</a> |
| 10 | (during which time I |
| 11 | <a href=http://lists.busybox.net/pipermail/busybox/2010-March/071783.html>contributed</a> |
| 12 | some toybox code and design ideas to busybox</a> but retained the copyrights to |
| 13 | my work), then <a href=http://landley.net/notes-2011.html#13-11-2011>relaunched</a> |
| 14 | under a 2-clause BSD license in 2011. |
| 15 | The following news entries predate that relaunch:</p> |
| 16 | |
| 17 | <hr> |
| 18 | <p><b>December 1, 2009</b> - <a href=downloads/toybox-0.1.0.tar.bz2>toybox-0.1.0</a> is out.</p> |
| 19 | |
| 20 | <p>This release is a couple build fixes and another bugfix to patch.</p> |
| 21 | |
| 22 | <hr> |
| 23 | <p><b>April 17, 2009</b> - Another bugfix release, |
| 24 | <a href=downloads/toybox-0.0.9.2.tar.bz2>toybox-0.0.9.2</a>, off by one allocation error in patch.</p> |
| 25 | |
| 26 | <p>(Darn fiddly command, innit?)</p> |
| 27 | |
| 28 | <hr> |
| 29 | <p><b>March 29, 2009</b> - Released |
| 30 | <a href=downloads/toybox-0.0.9.1.tar.bz2>toybox 0.0.9.1</a> which is a bugfix |
| 31 | release for issues with the patch command.</p> |
| 32 | |
| 33 | <p>The project is currently on hold while the developers learn Lua and |
| 34 | decide whether or not to port the whole thing to that language. |
| 35 | (Also note: the mailing list moved. See the links on the left. You'll |
| 36 | have to resubscribe.)</p> |
| 37 | |
| 38 | <hr> |
| 39 | <p><b>January 29, 2009</b> - Released |
| 40 | <a href=downloads/toybox-0.0.9.tar.bz2>toybox 0.0.9.tar.bz2</a> which is a minor packaging |
| 41 | fix for 0.0.8. (The previous release tarball contained a prebuilt x86-64 |
| 42 | kconfig/conf file, because the release script ran defconfig to |
| 43 | pregenerate help.h, and didn't run make clean afterwards.) The actual source |
| 44 | code is identical to the previous release.</p> |
| 45 | |
| 46 | <hr> |
| 47 | <p><b>January 20, 2009</b> - <a href=downloads/toybox-0.0.8.tar.bz2>toybox 0.0.8</a> |
| 48 | adds the uname, cksum, and mkswapfs commands.</p> |
| 49 | |
| 50 | <p>This uname implementation is cross compile friendly: when built as a 32 bit |
| 51 | binary on an x86_64 host, it reports "i686" to confuse autoconf less.</p> |
| 52 | |
| 53 | <p>This cksum has several extra command line options which can be used to |
| 54 | produce different cksum variants based on the same crc32 algorithm. For |
| 55 | example, the broadcom "trx" image packaging uses a little endian crc, |
| 56 | pre-inverted instead of post-inverted, and does not include the length. |
| 57 | (Without these arguments, it produces the normal SUSv4 cksum output.)</p> |
| 58 | |
| 59 | <p>It also upgrades netcat with a server mode (-l option) and fixes several |
| 60 | netcat bugs. It also fixed multiple bugs in "patch", works around a |
| 61 | reiserfs bug in cp, and oneit can reboot on exit more reliably.</p> |
| 62 | |
| 63 | <p><b>November 12, 2008</b> - |
| 64 | <a href=downloads/toybox-0.0.7.tar.bz2>toybox 0.0.7</a> |
| 65 | adds sort and tee commands, upgrades the internal option parsing logic and the |
| 66 | test suite, and numerous bugfixes (bunzip, chroot, cat, patch).</p> |
| 67 | |
| 68 | <p><b>May 26, 2008</b> - <a href=downloads/toybox-0.0.6.tar.bz2>toybox 0.0.6</a> |
| 69 | adds cat, rmdir, and seq. Bugfixes to cp and a new -v option. Updates mdev to |
| 70 | work with the 2.6.25 kernel. Updates patch to knows that a file dated |
| 71 | 1969-12-31 means it doesn't exist, and to fail if a file it needs to create |
| 72 | already exists. Command line option parsing can now handle things like "echo |
| 73 | -nex" vs "echo -ne". Several updates to the test suite (run scripts/test.sh), |
| 74 | and some build fixes.</p> |
| 75 | |
| 76 | <p> |
| 77 | <hr> |
| 78 | <p><b>March 29, 2008</b> - |
| 79 | Time to release <a href=downloads/toybox-0.0.5.tar.bz2>toybox 0.0.5</a>, with |
| 80 | new commands cp and chvt and several bugfixes.</p> |
| 81 | |
| 82 | <p>More makefile targets: "make test" runs the test suite (which needs more test |
| 83 | scripts), and make install/install_flat/uninstall/uninstall_flat calls |
| 84 | make/install.sh (with options --long --symlink --force --uninstall depending |
| 85 | on the context).</p> |
| 86 | |
| 87 | <p>Most of the work has been behind the scenes, namely a significant rewrite of |
| 88 | the build logic so adding each new command consists of adding a single C file to |
| 89 | the "toys" directory, eliminating the need to touch any other files. |
| 90 | There are specially formatted comments at the top of the C file to generate |
| 91 | the other files, see toys/hello.c for an example. (See generated/README.txt |
| 92 | and <a href=code.html>code.html</a> for details.)</p> |
| 93 | |
| 94 | <p><b>January 2, 2008</b> - And <a href=downloads/toybox-0.0.4.tar.bz2>toybox-0.0.4.tar.bz2</a> is out. |
| 95 | The new applets this time around include basename, chroot, dirname, dmesg, |
| 96 | help, mkfifo, netcat, patch, sha1sum, touch, and tty.</p> |
| 97 | |
| 98 | <p>Note that this "touch" includes -l to set the length, which can truncate |
| 99 | a file or create a commpletely sparse file, good for filesystem images.</p> |
| 100 | |
| 101 | <p>Expect the next release in about 6 months.</p> |
| 102 | |
| 103 | <p><b>December 12, 2007</b> - Updated the list of implemented applications, |
| 104 | put up a <a href=todo.txt>todo list</a> and <a href=code.html>infrastructure |
| 105 | documentation</a>. Expect another release towards the end of the month.</p> |
| 106 | |
| 107 | <p><b>June 18, 2007</b> - Put out |
| 108 | <a href=downloads/toybox-0.0.3.tar.bz2>toybox-0.0.3.tar.bz2</a> since it's |
| 109 | been too long since I did something like that. This one implements |
| 110 | catv, count, df, echo, false, oneit, pwd, sleep, sync, toysh, true, which, |
| 111 | and yes (which is what "make defconfig" enables). There are several other |
| 112 | commands not enabled by defconfig, because they don't really work yet.</p> |
| 113 | |
| 114 | <p>Most of the general infrastructure's there now, although lots of tweaking |
| 115 | and optimizing is still needed. The test suite is skeletal and not entirely |
| 116 | checked in yet, but I'm working on that.</p> |
| 117 | |
| 118 | <p>I don't have nearly as much time to work on this as I'd like, but I'm making |
| 119 | a little progress.</p> |
| 120 | |
| 121 | <p><b>January 31, 2007</b> - |
| 122 | Toybox <a href=downloads/toybox-0.0.2.tar.bz2>0.0.2 release</a>. |
| 123 | Implements count, yes, pwd, echo, bzcat, catv, oneit, and an unfinished |
| 124 | skeleton of mke2fs. Adds argument parsing logic and bunzip code to library. |
| 125 | Now configured with menuconfig. Adds "make baseline" and "make bloatcheck" |
| 126 | using Matt Mackall's bloat-o-meter, and scripts/showasm.</p> |
| 127 | |
| 128 | <p>Screwing up the web page a bit, adding an index bar along the side |
| 129 | which doesn't properly connect up to anything yet. (Busy implementing |
| 130 | mke2fs and gene2fs.)</p> |
| 131 | |
| 132 | <p><b>October 30, 2006</b> - |
| 133 | Toybox <a href=downloads/toybox-0.0.1.tar.bz2>0.0.1 release</a>. Implements |
| 134 | df, a skeletal toysh, and some library functions. Proof of concept, really.</p> |
| 135 | |
| 136 | <p><b>September 7, 2006</b> - |
| 137 | Project launched, first commit to mercurial archive.</p> |
| 138 | |
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