1<html><head><title>toybox roadmap</title> 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 8utilities, and are using those to determine which commands to implement 9for Toybox's 1.0 release. (Most of these have their own section in the 10<a href=status.html>status page</a>.)</p> 11 12<p>The most interesting publicly available standards are POSIX-2008 13(also known as the Single 14Unix Specification version 4) and the Linux Standard Base (version 4.1). 15The main test harness is including toybox in <a href=https://landley.net/aboriginal/about.html>Aboriginal Linux</a> and if that can 16build itself using the result to <a href=https://github.com/landley/control-images>build Linux From Scratch</a> (version 6.8). 17We also aim to replace Android's Toolbox.</p> 18 19<p>At a secondary level we'd like to meet other use cases. We've analyzed 20the commands provided by similar projects (klibc, sash, sbase, embutils, 21nash, and beastiebox), along with various vendor configurations of busybox, 22and some end user requests.</p> 23 24<p>Finally, we'd like to provide a good replacement for the Bash shell, 25which was the first program Linux ever ran and remains the standard shell 26of Linux no matter what Ubuntu says. This doesn't mean including the full 27set of Bash 4.x functionality, but does involve {various,features} <(beyond) 28posix.</p> 29 30<p>See the <a href=status.html>status page</a> for the combined list 31and progress towards implementing it.</p> 32 33<ul> 34<li><a href=#susv4>POSIX-2008/SUSv4</a></li> 35<li><a href=#sigh>Linux "Standard" Base</a></li> 36<li><a href=#dev_env>Development Environment</a></li> 37<li><a href=#android>Android Toolbox</a></li> 38<li><a href=#aosp>Building AOSP</a></li> 39<li><a href=#tizen>Tizen Core</a></li> 40<li><a href=#buildroot>buildroot</a></li> 41<li>Miscelaneous: <a href=#klibc>klibc</a>, <a href=#glibc>glibc</a>, 42<a href=#sash>sash</a>, <a href=#sbase>sbase</a>, 43<a href=#uclinux>uclinux</a>...</li> 44</ul> 45 46<hr /> 47<a name="standards"> 48<h2>Use case: standards compliance.</h2> 49 50<h3><a name=susv4 /><a href="#susv4">POSIX-2008/SUSv4</a></h3> 51<p>The best standards describe reality rather than attempting to impose a 52new one. A good standard should document, not legislate. 53Standards which document existing reality tend to be approved by 54more than one standards body, such ANSI and ISO both approving C. That's why 55the IEEE POSIX committee's 2008 standard, the Single Unix Specification version 564, and the Open Group Base Specification edition 7 are all the same standard 57from three sources, but most people just call it "posix" (portable operating 58system derived from unix). It's available <a href=https://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9699919799>online in full</a>, and may be downloaded as a tarball... 59with a caveat.</p> 60 61<p>Although previous versions of Posix have their own 62stable URLs (where you can still find 63<a href=https://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/009695399/>SUSv3</a> and 64<a href=https://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/7990989775/>SUSv2</a>), 65the 2008 release of SUSv4 was replaced by a 2013 release also claiming 66to be SUSv4, then again by a 2018 release still at the same URL. Similarly, 67the other version numbers claim not to have changed, but instead adopted some 68sort of "Windows 95" naming scheme ("The Open Group Base Specifications Issue 697, 2018 edition"). Since a moving target isn't a standard, we've stuck 70with the 2008 version and ignored whatever changes they make 71until they stop this forced-upgrade-behind-your back nonsense. 72Luckily you can still find the original content 73<a href=https://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9699919799.2008edition/>here</a>. 74(We haven't changed the URLs in each command to the longer version yet, 75but can if conflicts arise.)</p> 76 77<h3>Why not just use posix for everything?</h3> 78 79<p>Unfortunately posix describes an incomplete subset of reality, 80lacking any mention of commands such as init or mount required to 81actually boot a system. It describes logname but not login. It provides ipcrm 82and ipcs, but not ipcmk, so you can use System V IPC resources but not create 83them. And widely used real-world commands such as tar and cpio (the basis 84of initramfs and RPM) which were present in earlier 85versions of the standard have been removed, while obsolete commands like 86cksum, compress, sccs and uucp remain with no mention of modern counterparts 87like crc32/sha1sum, gzip/xz, svn/git or scp/rsync. Meanwhile the commands 88themselves are missing dozens of features and specify silly things like ebcdic 89support in dd or that wc should use %d (not %lld) for byte counts. So 90we have to extensively filter posix to get a useful set of recommendations.</p> 91 92<p>Starting with the 93<a href="http://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9699919799.2008edition/idx/utilities.html">full "utilities" list</a>, 94we first remove generally obsolete 95commands (compess ed ex pr uncompress uccp uustat uux), commands for the 96pre-CVS "SCCS" source control system (admin delta get prs rmdel sact sccs unget 97val what), fortran support (asa fort77), and batch processing support (batch 98qalter qdel qhold qmove qmsg qrerun qrls qselect qsig qstat qsub).</p> 99 100<p>Some commands are for a compiler toolchain (ar c99 cflow ctags cxref gencat 101iconv lex m4 make nm strings strip tsort yacc), which is outside of toybox's 102mandate and should be supplied externally. (Again, some of these may be 103revisited later, but not for toybox 1.0.)</p> 104 105<p>Some commands are part of a command shell, and can't be implemented as 106separate executables (alias bg cd command fc fg getopts hash jobs kill read 107type ulimit umask unalias wait). These may be revisited as part of a built-in 108toybox shell, but are not exported into $PATH via symlinks. (If you fork a 109child process and have it "cd" then exit, you've accomplished nothing.) 110Again, what posix provides is incomplete: a shell also needs exit, if, while, 111for, case, export, set, unset, trap, exec... (And for bash compatibility 112function, source...)</p> 113 114<p>A few other commands are judgement calls, providing command-line 115internationalization support (iconv locale localedef), System V inter-process 116communication (ipcrm ipcs), and cross-tty communication from the minicomputer 117days (talk mesg write). The "pax" utility <a href=https://slashdot.org/story/06/09/04/1335226/debian-kicks-jrg-schilling>failed</a> to replace tar, 118"mailx" is 119a command line email client, and "lp" submits files for printing to... what 120exactly? (cups?) The standard defines crontab but not crond.</p> 121 122<p>Removing all of that leaves the following commands, which toybox should 123implement:</p> 124 125<blockquote><b> 126<span id=posix> 127at awk basename bc cal cat chgrp chmod chown cksum cmp comm cp 128csplit cut date dd df diff dirname du echo env expand expr false file find 129fold fuser getconf grep head id join kill link ln logger logname ls man 130mkdir mkfifo more mv newgrp nice nl nohup od paste patch pathchk printf ps 131pwd renice rm rmdir sed sh sleep sort split stty tabs tail tee test time 132touch tput tr true tty uname unexpand uniq unlink uudecode uuencode vi wc 133who xargs zcat 134</span> 135</b></blockquote> 136 137<h3><a name=sigh /><a href="#sigh">Linux Standard Base</a></h3> 138 139<p>One attempt to supplement POSIX towards an actual usable system was the 140Linux Standard Base. Unfortunately, the quality of this "standard" is 141fairly low.</p> 142 143<p>POSIX allowed its standards process to be compromised 144by leaving things out, thus allowing IBM mainframes and Windows NT to drive 145a truck through the holes and declare themselves compilant. But it means what 146they DID standardize tends to be respected (if sometimes obsolete).</p> 147 148<p>The Linux Standard Base's failure mode is different, they respond to 149pressure by including anything their members pay them enough to promote, 150such as allowing Red Hat to push 151RPM into the standard even though all sorts of distros (Debian, Slackware, Arch, 152Gentoo) don't use it and never will. This means anything in the LSB is 153at best a suggestion: arbitrary portions of this standard are widely 154ignored.</p> 155 156<p>The community perception seems to be that the Linux Standard Base is 157the best standard money can buy, I.E. the Linux Foundation is supported by 158financial donations from large companies and the LSB 159<a href=https://www.softwarefreedom.org/blog/2016/apr/11/lf/>represents the interests 160of those donors</a> more than technical merit. (The Linux Foundation, which 161maintains the LSB, isn't a 501c3. It's a 501c6, the 162same kind of legal entity as the Tobacco Institute and Microsoft's old 163"Don't Copy That Floppy" program.) Debian officially 164<a href=http://lwn.net/Articles/658809>washed its hands of LSB</a> when 5.0 165came out in 2015, and no longer even pretends to support it (which may affect 166Debian derivatives like Ubuntu and Knoppix). Toybox hasn't moved to 5.0 for 167similar reasons.</p> 168 169<p>That said, Posix by itself isn't enough, and this is the next most 170comprehensive standards effort for Linux so far, so we salvage what we can.</p> 171 172<p>The LSB specifies a <a href=http://refspecs.linuxfoundation.org/LSB_4.1.0/LSB-Core-generic/LSB-Core-generic/cmdbehav.html>list of command line 173utilities</a>:</p> 174 175<blockquote><b> 176ar at awk batch bc chfn chsh col cpio crontab df dmesg du echo egrep 177fgrep file fuser gettext grep groupadd groupdel groupmod groups 178gunzip gzip hostname install install_initd ipcrm ipcs killall lpr ls 179lsb_release m4 md5sum mknod mktemp more mount msgfmt newgrp od passwd 180patch pidof remove_initd renice sed sendmail seq sh shutdown su sync 181tar umount useradd userdel usermod xargs zcat 182</b></blockquote> 183 184<p>Where posix specifies one of those commands, LSB's deltas tend to be 185accomodations for broken tool versions which aren't up to date with the 186standard 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> 187for examples.)</p> 188 189<p>Since we've already committed to using our own judgement to skip bits of 190POSIX, and LSB's "judgement" in this regard is purely bug workarounds to declare 191various legacy tool implementations "compliant", this means we're mostly 192interested in the set of LSB tools that aren't mentioned in posix.</p> 193 194<p>Of these, gettext and msgfmt are internationalization, install_initd and 195remove_initd weren't present in Ubuntu 10.04, lpr is out of scope, 196and lsb_release just reports information in /etc/os-release.</p> 197 198<p>This leaves:</p> 199 200<blockquote><b> 201<span id=lsb> 202chfn chsh dmesg egrep fgrep groupadd groupdel groupmod groups 203gunzip gzip hostname install killall md5sum 204mknod mktemp mount passwd pidof sendmail seq shutdown 205su sync tar umount useradd userdel usermod zcat 206</span> 207</b></blockquote> 208 209<h3><a name=rfc /><a href="#rfc">IETF RFCs</a></h3> 210 211<p>Discussion of standards wouldn't be complete without the Internet 212Engineering Task Force's "<a href=https://www.rfc-editor.org/in-notes/rfc-index.txt>Request For Comments</a>" collection.</p> 213 214<p>These are more about protocols than commands. The noise level is 215extremely high: there's thousands of RFCs, many describing a proposed idea 216that never took off, and less than 1% of the resulting documents are 217currently relevant to toybox. And the documents are numbered based on the 218order they were received, with no real attempt at coherently indexing 219the result. As with man pages they can be <a href=https://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc0610.txt>long and complicated</a> or 220<a href=https://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc1951.txt>terse and impenetrable</a>, 221have developed a certain amount of <a href=https://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc8179.txt>bureaucracy</a> over the years, and often the easiest way to understand what 222they <a href=https://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc4330.txt>document</a> is to find an <a href=https://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc1769.txt>earlier version</a> to read first.</p> 223 224<p>That said, RFC documents can be useful (especially for networking protocols) 225and the three URL templates the recommended starting files 226for new commands (toys/example/skeleton.c or toys/example/hello.c depending on how much 227plumbing you want to start with) provide point to are posix, lsb, and 228rfc pages.</p> 229 230<hr /> 231<a name="dev_env"> 232<h2><a href="#dev_env">Use case: provide a self-hosting development environment</a></h2> 233 234<p>The following commands were enough to build the <a href=http://landley.net/aboriginal/about.html>Aboriginal Linux</a> development 235environment, boot it to a shell prompt, and build <a href=http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/lfs/view/6.8/>Linux From Scratch 6.8</a> under it.</p> 236 237<blockquote><b> 238<span id=development> 239bzcat cat cp dirname echo env patch rmdir sha1sum sleep sort sync 240true uname wc which yes zcat 241awk basename chmod chown cmp cut date dd diff 242egrep expr fdisk find grep gzip head hostname id install ln ls 243mkdir mktemp mv od readlink rm sed sh tail tar touch tr uniq 244wget whoami xargs chgrp comm gunzip less logname split 245tee test time bunzip2 chgrp chroot comm cpio dmesg 246dnsdomainname ftpd ftpget ftpput gunzip ifconfig init less 247logname losetup mdev mount mountpoint nc pgrep pkill 248pwd route split stat switch_root tac umount vi 249resize2fs tune2fs fsck.ext2 genext2fs mke2fs xzcat 250</span> 251</b></blockquote> 252 253<p>This use case includes running init scripts and other shell scripts, running 254configure, make, and install in each package, and providing basic command line 255facilities such as a text editor. (It does not include a compiler toolchain or 256C library, those are outside the scope of the toybox project, although mkroot 257has a <a href=https://landley.net/code/qcc>potentialy follow-up project</a>. 258For now we use distro toolchains, 259<a href=https://github.com/richfelker/musl-cross-make>musl-cross-make</a>, 260and the Android NDK for build testing.) 261That build system also instaled bash 2.05b as #!/bin/sh and its scripts 262required bash extensions not present in shells such as busybox ash. 263To replace that toysh needs to supply several bash extensions _and_ work 264when called under the name "bash".</p> 265 266<p>The development methodology used a <a href=http://landley.net/aboriginal/FAQ.html#debug_logging>command logging wrapper</a> 267that intercepted each command called out of the $PATH and append the 268command line to a log file, then <a href=https://github.com/landley/aboriginal/blob/master/more/report-recorded-commands.sh>analyze</a> the result to create a 269<a href=https://landley.net/notes-2008.html#23-01-2008>list of commands</a>, 270then <a href=https://github.com/landley/aboriginal/blob/master/host-tools.sh>create a directory of symlinks</a> pointing to those commands out of the 271host $PATH. Then the new implementation can replace these commands one 272at a time, checking the results and the log output to spot any behavior 273changes.</p> 274 275<h3>Stages and moving targets</h3> 276 277<p>This use case has two stages: 1) building a bootable system that can 278rebuild itself from source, and 2) a build environment capable 279of bootstrapping up to arbitrary complexity (as exemplified by building 280Linux From Scratch and Beyond Linux From Scratch under the resulting 281system). To accomplish just the first goal, the old build 282still needs the following busybox commands for which toybox does not yet 283supply adequate replacements:</p> 284 285<blockquote><b> 286awk dd diff expr fdisk ftpd gzip less route sh sha512sum tr unxz vi wget xzcat 287</b></blockquote> 288 289<p>All of those except awk, ftpd, and less have partial implementations 290in "pending".</p> 291 292<p>In 2017 Aboriginal Linux development ended, replaced by the 293<a href=https://github.com/landley/mkroot>mkroot</a> project 294designed to use an existing cross+native toolchain (such as 295<a href=https://github.com/richfelker/musl-cross-make>musl-cross-make</a> 296or the Android NDK) instead of building its own. In 2019 the still-incomplete 297mkroot was merged into toybox as the "make root" target. This is intended 298as a simpler way of providing essentially the same build environment, and doesn't 299significantly affect the rest of this analysis (although the "rebuild itself 300from source" test now includes building musl-cross-make under either mkroot 301or toybox's "make airlock" host environment).</p> 302 303<p>Building Linux From Scratch is not the same as building the 304<a href=https://source.android.com>Android Open Source Project</a>, 305but after toybox 1.0 we plan to try 306<a href=http://landley.net/aboriginal/about.html#hairball>modifying the AOSP build</a> 307to reduce dependencies. (It's fairly likely we'll have to add at least 308a read-only git utility so repo can download the build's source code, 309but that's actually <a href=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P7n6G2IL6eo>not 310that hard</a>. We'll probably also need our own "make" at some point after 3111.0, which is its own moving target thanks to cmake and ninja and so on.) 312The ongoing Android <a href=http://lists.landley.net/pipermail/toybox-landley.net/2018-January/009330.html>hermetic build</a> work is already advancing 313this goal.</p> 314 315<hr /> 316<h2><a name=android /><a href="#android">Use case: Replacing Android Toolbox</a></h2> 317 318<p>Android has a policy against GPL in userspace, so even though BusyBox 319predates Android by many years, they couldn't use it. Instead they grabbed 320an old version of ash (later replaced by 321<a href="https://www.mirbsd.org/mksh.htm">mksh</a>) 322and implemented their own command line utility set 323called "toolbox" (which toybox has already mostly replaced).</p> 324 325<p>Toolbox doesn't have its own repository, instead it's part of Android's 326<a href=https://android.googlesource.com/platform/system/core>system/core 327git repository</a>. Android's Native Development Kit (their standalone 328downloadable toolchain) has its own 329<a href=https://android.googlesource.com/platform/ndk/+/master/docs/Roadmap.md>roadmap</a>, and each version has 330<a href=https://developer.android.com/ndk/downloads/revision_history>release 331notes</a>.</p> 332 333<h3>Toolbox commands:</h3> 334 335<p>According to <a href=https://android.googlesource.com/platform/system/core/+/master/toolbox/Android.bp> 336system/core/toolbox/Android.bp</a> the toolbox directory builds the 337following commands:</p> 338 339<blockquote><b> 340getevent getprop modprobe setprop start 341</b></blockquote> 342 343<p>getprop/setprop/start were in toybox and moved back because they're so 344tied to non-public system interfaces. modprobe shares the implementation 345used in init. getevent probably does make sense as a toybox command, but at the 346moment it's built with a python script that pulls all the constants from the 347latest kernel headers, which is very convenient.</p> 348 349<h3>Other Android /system/bin commands</h3> 350 351<p>Other than the toolbox links, the currently interesting 352binaries in /system/bin are:</p> 353 354<ul> 355<li><b>arping</b> - ARP REQUEST tool (iputils)</li> 356<li><b>blkid</b> - identify block devices (e2fsprogs)</li> 357<li><b>e2fsck</b> - fsck for ext2/ext3/ext4 (e2fsprogs)</li> 358<li><b>fsck.f2fs</b> - fsck for f2fs (f2fs-tools)</li> 359<li><b>fsck_msdos</b> - fsck for FAT (BSD)</li> 360<li><b>gzip</b> - compression/decompression tool (zlib)</li> 361<li><b>ip</b> - network routing tool (iproute2)</li> 362<li><b>iptables/ip6tables</b> - IPv4/IPv6 NAT admin (iptables)</li> 363<li><b>iw</b> - wireless device config tool (iw)</li> 364<li><b>logwrapper</b> - redirect stdio to android log (Android)</li> 365<li><b>make_ext4fs</b> - make ext4 fs (Android)</li> 366<li><b>make_f2fs</b> - make f2fs fs (f2fs-tools)</li> 367<li><b>ping/ping6</b> - ICMP ECHO_REQUEST tool (iputils)</li> 368<li><b>reboot</b> - reboot (Android)</li> 369<li><b>resize2fs</b> - resize ext2/ext3/ext4 fs (e2fsprogs)</li> 370<li><b>sh</b> - mksh (BSD)</li> 371<li><b>ss</b> - socket statistics (iproute2)</li> 372<li><b>tc</b> - traffic control (iproute2)</li> 373<li><b>tracepath/tracepath6</b> - trace network path (iputils)</li> 374<li><b>traceroute/traceroute6</b> - trace network route (iputils)</li> 375</ul> 376 377<p>The names in parentheses are the upstream source of the command.</p> 378 379<h3>Analysis</h3> 380 381<p>For reference, combining everything listed above that's still "fair game" 382for toybox, we get:</p> 383 384<blockquote><b> 385arping blkid e2fsck dd fsck.f2fs fsck_msdos getevent gzip ip iptables 386ip6tables iw logwrapper make_ext4fs make_f2fs modpobe newfs_msdos ping ping6 387reboot resize2fs sh ss tc tracepath tracepath6 traceroute traceroute6 388</b></blockquote> 389 390<p>We may eventually implement all of that, but for toybox 1.0 we need to 391focus a bit. If Android has an acceptable external package, and the command 392isn't needed for system bootstrapping, replacing the external package is 393not a priority.</p> 394 395<p>However, several commands toybox plans to implement anyway could potentially 396replace existing Android versions, so we should take into account Android's use 397cases when doing so. This includes:</p> 398<blockquote><b> 399<span id=toolbox> 400dd getevent gzip modprobe newfs_msdos sh 401</span> 402</b></blockquote> 403 404<p>Update: <a href=https://android.googlesource.com/platform/system/core/+/master/system/core/Android.bp> 405external/toybox/Android.bp</a> has symlinks for the following toys out 406of "pending". (The toybox modprobe is also built for the device, but 407it isn't actually used and is only there for sanity checking against 408the libmodprobe-based implementation.) These should be a priority for 409cleanup:</p> 410 411<blockquote><b> 412bc dd diff expr getfattr lsof more stty tr traceroute 413</b></blockquote> 414 415<p>Android wishlist:</p> 416 417<blockquote><b> 418mtools genvfatfs mke2fs gene2fs 419</b></blockquote> 420 421<hr /> 422<h2><a name=aosp /><a href="#aosp">Use case: Building AOSP</a></h2> 423 424<p>The list of external tools used to build AOSP was 425<a href="https://android.googlesource.com/platform/build/soong/+/master/ui/build/paths/config.go">here</a>, 426but as they're switched over to toybox they disappear and reappear 427<a href="https://android.googlesource.com/platform/prebuilts/build-tools/+/refs/heads/master/path/linux-x86/">here</a>.</p> 428 429<blockquote><b> 430awk basename bash bc bzip2 cat chmod cmp comm cp cut date dd diff dirname du 431echo egrep env expr find fuser getconf getopt git grep gzip head hexdump 432hostname id jar java javap ln ls lsof m4 make md5sum mkdir mktemp mv od openssl 433paste patch pgrep pkill ps pstree pwd python python2.7 python3 readlink 434realpath rm rmdir rsync sed setsid sh sha1sum sha256sum sha512sum 435sleep sort stat tar tail tee todos touch tr true uname uniq unix2dos unzip 436wc which whoami xargs xxd xz zip zipinfo 437</b></blockquote> 438 439<p>The following are already in the tree and will be used directly:</p> 440 441<blockquote><b> 442awk bzip2 jar java javap m4 make python python2.7 python3 xz 443</b></blockquote> 444 445<p>Subtracting what's already in toybox (including the following toybox toys 446that are still in pending: <code>bc dd diff expr gzip lsof tar tr</code>), 447that leaves:</p> 448 449<blockquote><b> 450bash fuser getopt git hexdump openssl pstree rsync sh todos unzip zip zipinfo 451</b></blockquote> 452 453<p>For AOSP, zip/zipinfo/unzip are likely to be libziparchive based. The 454todos callers will use unix2dos instead if it's available. git/openssl 455seem like they should just be brought in to the tree. rsync is used to 456work around a Mac <code>cp -Rf</code> bug with broken symbolic links. That 457leaves:</p> 458 459<blockquote><b> 460bash fuser getopt hexdump pstree 461</b></blockquote> 462 463<p>(Why are fuser and pstree used during the AOSP build? They're used for 464diagnostics if something goes wrong. So it's really just bash, getopt, 465and hexdump that are actually used to build.)</p> 466 467<hr /> 468<h2><a name=tizen /><a href="#tizen">Use case: Tizen Core</a></h2> 469 470<p>The Tizen project has expressed a desire to eliminate GPLv3 software 471from its core system, and is installing toybox as 472<a href=https://wiki.tizen.org/wiki/Toybox>part of this process</a>.</p> 473 474<p>They have a fairly long list of new commands they'd like to see in toybox:</p> 475 476<blockquote><b> 477<span id=tizen> 478arch base64 users dir vdir unexpand shred join csplit 479hostid nproc runcon sha224sum sha256sum sha384sum sha512sum sha3sum mkfs.vfat fsck.vfat 480dosfslabel uname stdbuf pinky diff3 sdiff zcmp zdiff zegrep zfgrep zless zmore 481</span> 482</b></blockquote> 483 484<p>In addition, they'd like to use several commands currently in pending:</p> 485 486<blockquote><b> 487<span id=tizen> 488tar diff printf wget rsync fdisk vi less tr test stty fold expr dd 489</span> 490</b></blockquote> 491 492<p>Also, tizen uses a different Linux Security Module called SMACK, so 493many of the SELinux options ala ls -Z need smack alternatives in an 494if/else setup.</p> 495 496<hr /><a name=buildroot /> 497<h2>buildroot:</h2> 498 499<p>The <a href=https://buildroot.org/downloads/manual/manual.html#requirement-mandatory>mandatory packages</a> 500section of the buildroot manual lists:</p> 501 502<blockquote><p> 503which sed make bash patch gzip bzip2 tar cpio unzip rsync file bc wget 504</p></blockquote> 505 506<p>(It also lists binutils gcc g++ perl python, and for debian it wants 507build-essential. And it wants file to be in /usr/bin because 508<a href=https://git.busybox.net/buildroot/tree/support/dependencies/dependencies.sh?h=2018.02.x#n84>libtool 509breaks otherwise</a>.)</p> 510 511<p>Buildroot does not support a cross toolchain that lives in "/usr/bin" 512with a prefix of "" (if you try, and chop out the test for a blank prefix, 513it dies trying to run "/usr/bin/-gcc"). But you can patch your way to 514making it work if you try.</p> 515 516<hr /><a name=klibc /> 517<h2>klibc:</h2> 518 519<p>Long ago some kernel developers came up with a project called 520<a href=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Klibc>klibc</a>. 521After a decade of development it still has no web page or HOWTO, 522and nobody's quite sure if the license is BSD or GPL. It inexplicably 523<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 524replacement.</p> 525 526<p>In addition to a C library even less capable than bionic (obsoleted by 527musl), klibc builds a random assortment of executables to run init scripts 528with. There's no multiplexer command, these are individual executables:</p> 529 530<blockquote><p><b> 531cat chroot cpio dd dmesg false fixdep fstype gunzip gzip halt ipconfig kill 532kinit ln losetup ls minips mkdir mkfifo mknodes 533mksyntax mount mv nfsmount nuke pivot_root poweroff readlink reboot resume 534run-init sh sha1hash sleep sync true umount uname zcat 535</b></p></blockquote> 536 537<p>To get that list, build klibc according to the instructions (I 538<a href=http://landley.net/notes-2013.html#23-01-2013>looked at</a> version 5392.0.2 and did cd klibc-*; ln -s /output/of/kernel/make/headers_install 540linux; make) then <b>echo $(for i in $(find . -type f); do file $i | grep -q 541executable && basename $i; done | grep -v '[.]g$' | sort -u)</b> to find 542executables, then eliminate the *.so files and *.shared duplicates.</p> 543 544<p>Some of those binaries are build-time tools that don't get installed, 545which removes mknodes, mksyntax, sha1hash, and fixdep from the list. 546(And sha1hash is just an unpolished sha1sum anyway.)</p> 547 548<p>The run-init command is more commonly called switch_root, nuke is just 549"rm -rf -- $@", and minips is more commonly called "ps". I'm not doing aliases 550for the oddball names.</p> 551 552<p>Yet more stale forks of dash and gzip sucked in here (see "dubious 553license terms" above), adding nothing to the other projects we've looked at. 554But we still need sh, gunzip, gzip, and zcat to replace this package.</p> 555 556<p>At the time I did the initial analysis toybox already had cat, chroot, dmesg, false, 557kill, ln, losetup, ls, mkdir, mkfifo, readlink, rm, switch_root, sleep, sync, 558true, and uname.</p> 559 560<p>The low hanging fruit is cpio, dd, ps, mv, and pivot_root.</p> 561 562<p>The "kinit" command is another gratuitous rename, it's init running as PID 1. 563The halt, poweroff, and reboot commands work with it.</p> 564 565<p>I've got mount and umount queued up already, fstype and nfsmount go with 566those. (And probably smbmount and p9mount, but this hasn't got one. Those 567are all about querying for login credentials, probably workable into the 568base mount command.)</p> 569 570<p>The ipconfig command here has a built in dhcp client, so it's ifconfig 571and dhcpcd and maybe some other stuff.</p> 572 573<p>The resume command is... weird. It finds a swap partition and reads data 574from it into a /proc file, something the kernel is capable of doing itself. 575(Even though the klibc author 576<a href=http://www.zytor.com/pipermail/klibc/2006-June/001748.html>attempted 577to remove</a> that capability from the kernel, current kernel/power/hibernate.c 578still parses "resume=" on the command line). And yet various distros seem to 579make use of klibc for this. 580Given the history of swsusp/hibernate (and 581<a href=http://lwn.net/Articles/333007>TuxOnIce</a> 582and <a href=http://lwn.net/Articles/242107>kexec jump</a>) I've lost track 583of the current state of the art here. Ah, Documentation/power/userland-swsusp.txt 584has the API docs, and <a href=http://suspend.sf.net>here's a better 585tool</a>...</p> 586 587<p>So the list of things actually in klibc are:</p> 588 589<blockquote><b> 590<span id=klibc_cmd> 591cat chroot dmesg false kill ln losetup ls mkdir mkfifo readlink rm switch_root 592sleep sync true uname 593 594cpio dd ps mv pivot_root 595mount nfsmount fstype umount 596sh gunzip gzip zcat 597kinit halt poweroff reboot 598ipconfig 599resume 600</span> 601</b></blockquote> 602 603<hr /> 604<a name=glibc /> 605<h2>glibc</h2> 606 607<p>Rather a lot of command line utilities come bundled with glibc:</p> 608 609<blockquote><b> 610catchsegv getconf getent iconv iconvconfig ldconfig ldd locale localedef 611mtrace nscd rpcent rpcinfo tzselect zdump zic 612</b></blockquote> 613 614<p>Of those, musl libc only implements ldd.</p> 615 616<p>catchsegv is a rudimentary debugger, probably out of scope for toybox.</p> 617 618<p>iconv has been <a href="#susv4">previously discussed</a>.</p> 619 620<p>iconvconfig is only relevant if iconv is user-configurable; musl uses a 621non-configurable iconv.</p> 622 623<p>getconf is a posix utility which displays several variables from 624unistd.h; it probably belongs in the development toolchain.</p> 625 626<p>getent handles retrieving entries from passwd-style databases 627(in a rather lame way) and is trivially replacable by grep.</p> 628 629<p>locale was discussed under <a href=#susv4>posix</a>. 630localedef compiles locale definitions, which musl currently does not use.</p> 631 632<p>mtrace is a perl script to use the malloc debugging that glibc has built-in; 633this is not relevant for musl, and would necessarily vary with libc. </p> 634 635<p>nscd is a name service caching daemon, which is not yet relevant for musl. 636rpcinfo and rpcent are related to rpc, which musl does not include.</p> 637 638<p>The remaining commands involve glibc's bundled timezone database, 639which seems to be derived from the <a href=http://www.iana.org/time-zones>IANA 640timezone database</a>. Unless we want to maintain our own fork of the 641standards body's database like glibc does, these are of no interest, 642but for completeness:</p> 643 644<p>tzselect outputs a TZ variable correponding to user input. 645The documentation does not indicate how to use it in a script, but it seems 646that Debian may have done so. 647zdump prints current time in each of several timezones, optionally 648outputting a great deal of extra information about each timezone. 649zic converts a description of a timezone to a file in tz format.</p> 650 651<p>None of glibc's bundled commands are currently of interest to toybox.</p> 652 653</b></blockquote> 654 655<hr /> 656<a name=sash /> 657<h2>Stand-Alone Shell</h2> 658 659<p>Wikipedia has <a href=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stand-alone_shell>a good 660summary of sash</a>, with links. The original Stand-Alone Shell project reached 661a stopping point, and then <a href=http://www.baiti.net/sash>"sash plus 662patches"</a> extended it a bit further. The result is a megabyte executable 663that provides 40 commands.</p> 664 665<p>Sash is a shell with built-in commands. It doesn't have a multiplexer 666command, meaning "sash ls -l" doesn't work (you have to go "sash -c 'ls -l'"). 667</p> 668 669<p>The list of commands can be obtained via building it and doing 670"echo help | ./sash | awk '{print $1}' | sed 's/^-//' | xargs echo", which 671gives us:</p> 672 673<blockquote><b> 674alias aliasall ar cd chattr chgrp chmod chown cmp cp chroot dd echo ed exec 675exit file find grep gunzip gzip help kill losetup losetup ln ls lsattr mkdir 676mknod more mount mv pivot_root printenv prompt pwd quit rm rmdir setenv source 677sum sync tar touch umask umount unalias where 678</b></blockquote> 679 680<p>Plus sh because it's a shell. A dozen or so commands can only sanely be 681implemented as shell builtins (alias aliasall cd exec exit prompt quit setenv 682source umask unalias), where is an alias for which, and at triage time toybox 683already has chgrp, chmod, chown, cmp, cp, chroot, echo, help, kill, losetup, 684ln, ls, mkdir, mknod, printenv, pwd, rm, rmdir, sync, and touch.</p> 685 686<p>This leaves:</p> 687 688<blockquote><b> 689<span id=sash_cmd> 690ar chattr dd ed file find grep gunzip gzip lsattr more mount mv pivot_root 691sh sum tar umount 692</span> 693</b></blockquote> 694 695<p>(For once, this project doesn't include a fork of gzip, instead 696it sucks in -lz from the host.)</p> 697 698<hr /> 699<a name=sbase /> 700<h2>sbase:</h2> 701 702<p>It's <a href=http://git.suckless.org/sbase>on suckless</a> in 703<a href=http://git.suckless.org/ubase>two parts</a>. As of November 2015 it's 704implemented the following (renaming "cron" to "crond" for 705consistency, and yanking "sponge", "mesg", "pagesize", "respawn", and 706"vtallow"):</p> 707 708<blockquote><p> 709<span id=sbase_cmd> 710basename cal cat chgrp chmod chown chroot cksum cmp cols comm cp crond cut date 711dirname du echo env expand expr false find flock fold getconf grep head 712hostname join kill link ln logger logname ls md5sum mkdir mkfifo mktemp mv 713nice nl nohup od paste printenv printf pwd readlink renice rm rmdir sed seq 714setsid sha1sum sha256sum sha512sum sleep sort split strings sync tail 715tar tee test tftp time touch tr true tty uname unexpand uniq unlink uudecode 716uuencode wc which xargs yes 717</span> 718</p></blockquote> 719 720<p>and<p> 721 722<blockquote><p> 723<span id=sbase_cmd> 724chvt clear dd df dmesg eject fallocate free id login mknod mountpoint 725passwd pidof ps stat su truncate unshare uptime watch 726who 727</span> 728</p></blockquote> 729 730<hr /> 731<a name=nash /> 732<h2>nash:</h2> 733 734<p>Red Hat's nash was part of its "mkinitrd" package, replacement for a shell 735and utilities on the boot floppy back in the 1990's (the same general idea 736as BusyBox, developed independently). Red Hat discontinued nash development 737in 2010, replacing it with dracut (which collects together existing packages, 738including busybox).</p> 739 740<p>I couldn't figure out how to beat source code out of 741<a href=http://pkgs.fedoraproject.org/git/mkinitrd>Fedora's current git</a> 742repository. The last release version that used it was Fedora Core 12 743which 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> 744that can be unwound with "rpm2cpio mkinitrd.src.rpm | cpio -i -d -H newc 745--no-absolute-filenames" and in there is a mkinitrd-6.0.93.tar.bz2 which 746has the source.</p> 747 748<p>In addition to being a bit like a command shell, the nash man page lists the 749following commands:</p> 750 751<blockquote><p> 752access echo find losetup mkdevices mkdir mknod mkdmnod mkrootdev mount 753pivot_root readlink raidautorun setquiet showlabels sleep switchroot umount 754</p></blockquote> 755 756<p>Oddly, the only occurrence of the string pivot_root in the nash source code 757is in the man page, the command isn't there. (It seems to have been removed 758when the underscoreless switchroot went in.)</p> 759 760<p>A more complete list seems to be the handlers[] array in nash.c:</p> 761 762<blockquote><p> 763access buildEnv cat cond cp daemonize dm echo exec exit find kernelopt 764loadDrivers loadpolicy mkchardevs mkblktab mkblkdevs mkdir mkdmnod mknod 765mkrootdev mount netname network null plymouth hotplug killplug losetup 766ln ls raidautorun readlink resume resolveDevice rmparts setDeviceEnv 767setquiet setuproot showelfinterp showlabels sleep stabilized status switchroot 768umount waitdev 769</p></blockquote> 770 771<p>This list is nuts: "plymouth" is an alias for "null" which is basically 772"true" (which thie above list doesn't have). Things like buildEnv and 773loadDrivers are bespoke Red Hat behavior that might as well be hardwired in 774to nash's main() without being called.</p> 775 776<p>Instead of eliminating items 777from the list with an explanation for each, I'm just going to cherry pick 778a few: the device mapper (dm, raidautorun) is probably interesting, 779hotplug (may be obsolete due to kernel changes that now load firmware 780directly), and another "resume" ala klibc.</p> 781 782<p>But mostly: I don't care about this one. And neither does Red Hat anymore.</p> 783 784<p>Verdict: ignore</p> 785 786<hr /> 787<a name=beastiebox /> 788<h2>Beastiebox</h2> 789 790<p>Back in 2008, the BSD guys vented some busybox-envy 791<a href=http://beastiebox.sourceforge.net>on sourceforge</a>. Then stopped. 792Their repository is still in CVS, hasn't been touched in years, it's a giant 793hairball of existing code sucked together. (The web page says the author 794is aware of crunchgen, but decided to do this by hand anyway. This is not 795a collection of new code, it's a katamari of existing code rolled up in a 796ball.)</p> 797 798<p>Combining the set of commands listed on the web page with the set of 799man pages in the source gives us:</P> 800 801<blockquote><p> 802[ cat chmod cp csh date df disklabel dmesg echo ex fdisk fsck fsck_ffs getty 803halt hostname ifconfig init kill less lesskey ln login ls lv mksh more mount 804mount_ffs mv pfctl ping poweroff ps reboot rm route sed sh stty sysctl tar test 805traceroute umount vi wiconfig 806</p></blockquote> 807 808<p>Apparently lv is the missing link between ed and vi, copyright 1982-1997 (do 809not want), ex is another obsolete vi mode, lesskey is "used to 810specify a set of key bindings to be used with less", and csh is a shell they 811sucked in (even though they have mksh?), [ is an alias for test. Several more bsd-isms that don't have Linux 812equivalents (even in the ubuntu "install this package" search) are 813disklabel, fsck_ffs, mount_ffs, and pfctl. And wiconfig is a 814wavelan interface network card driver utility. Subtracting all that and the 815commands toybox already implements at triage time, we get:</p> 816 817<blockquote><p> 818<span id=beastiebox_cmd> 819fdisk fsck getty halt ifconfig init kill less more mount mv ping poweroff 820ps reboot route sed sh stty sysctl tar test traceroute umount vi 821</span> 822</p></blockquote> 823 824<p>Not a hugely interesting list, but eh.</p> 825 826<p>Verdict: ignore</p> 827 828<hr /> 829<a name=BsdBox /> 830<h2>BsdBox</h2> 831 832<p>Somebody decided to do a <a href=https://wiki.freebsd.org/AdrianChadd/BsdBox>multicall binary for freebsd</a>.</p> 833 834<p>They based it on crunchgen, a tool that glues existing programs together 835into an archive and uses the name to execute the right one. It has no 836simplification or code sharing benefits whatsoever, it's basically an 837archiver that produces executables.</p> 838 839<p>That's about where I stopped reading.</p> 840 841<p>Verdict: ignore.</p> 842 843<hr /> 844<a name=slowaris /> 845<h2>OpenSolaris Busybox</h2> 846 847<p>Somebody <a href=http://hub.opensolaris.org/bin/view/Project+busybox/>wrote 848a wiki page</a> saying that Busybox for OpenSolaris would be a good idea.</p> 849 850<p>The corresponding "files" tab is an auto-generated stub. The project never 851even got as far as suggesting commands to include before Oracle discontinued 852OpenSolaris.</p> 853 854<p>Verdict: ignore.</p> 855 856<hr /> 857<a name=uclinux /> 858<h2>uClinux</h2> 859 860<p>Long ago a hardware developer named Jeff Dionne put together a 861nommu Linux distribution, which involved rewriting a lot of command line 862utilities that relied on <a href=http://nommu.org/memory-faq.txt>features 863unavailable on nommu</a> hardware.</p> 864 865<p>In 2003 Jeff moved to Japan and handed 866the project off to people who allowed it to roll to a stop. The website 867turned into a mess of 404 links, the navigation indexes stopped being 868updated over a decade ago, and the project's CVS repository suffered a 869hard drive failure for which there were no backups. The project continued 870to put out "releases" through 2014 (you have to scroll down in the "news" 871section to find them, the "HTTP download" section in the nav bar on the 872left hasn't been updated in over a decade), which were hand-updated tarball 873snapshots mostly consisting of software from the 1990's. For example the 8742014 release still contained ipfwadm, the package which predated ipchains, 875which predated iptables, which is in the process of being replaced by 876nftables.</p> 877 878<p>Nevertheless, people still try to use this because (at least until the 879launch of <a href=http://nommu.org>nommu.org</a>) the project was viewed 880as the place to discuss, develop, and learn about nommu Linux. 881The role of uclinux.org as an educational resource kept people coming 882to it long after it had collapsed as a Linux distro.</p> 883 884<p>Starting around 0.6.0 toybox began to address nommu support with the goal 885of putting uClinux out of its misery.</p> 886 887<p>An analysis of <a href=http://www.uclinux.org/pub/uClinux/dist/uClinux-dist-20140504.tar.bz2>uClinux-dist-20140504</a> found 312 package 888subdirectories under "user".</p> 889 890<h3>Taking out the trash</h3> 891 892<p>A bunch of packages (<b>inotify-tools, input-event-demon, ipsec-tools, netifd, 893keepalived, mobile-broadband-provider-info, nuttp, readline, snort, 894snort-barnyard, socat, sqlite, sysklogd, sysstat, tcl, ubus, uci, udev, 895unionfs, uqmi, usb_modeswitch, usbutils, util-linux</b>) 896are hard to evaluate because 897uclinux has directories for them, but their source isn't actually in the 898uclinux tree. In some of these the makefiles download a git repo during 899the build, so I'm assuming you can build the external package if you really 900care. (Even when I know what these packages do, I'm skipping them 901because uclinux doesn't actually contain them, and any given snapshot 902of the build system will bitrot as external web links change over time.)</p> 903 904<p>Other packages are orphaned, meaning they're not mentioned from any Kconfig 905or Makefiles outside of their directory, so uclinux can't actually build 906them: <b>mbus</b> is an orphaned i2c test program expecting to run in some sort 907of hardwired hardware context, <b>mkeccbin</b> is an orphaned "ECC annotated 908binary file" generator (meaning it's half of a flash writer), 909<b>wsc_upnp</b> is a "Ralink WPS" driver (some sort of stale wifi chip)...</p> 910 911<p>The majority of the remaining packages are probably not of interest to 912toybox due to being so obsolete or special purpose they may not actually be 913of interest to anybody anymore. (This list also includes a lot of 914special-purpose network back-end stuff that's hard for anybody but 915datacenter admins to evaluate the current relevance of.)</p> 916 917<blockquote><b><p> 918arj asterisk boottools bpalogin br2684ctl camserv can4linux cgi_generic 919cgihtml clamav clamsmtp conntrack-tools cramfs crypto-tools cxxtest 920ddns3-client de2ts-cal debug demo diald discard dnsmasq dnsmasq2 921ethattach expat-examples ez-ipupdate fakeidentd 922fconfig ferret flatfs flthdr freeradius freeswan frob-led frox fswcert 923game gettyd gnugk haserl horch 924hostap hping httptunnel ifattach ipchains 925ipfwadm ipmasqadm ipportfw ipredir ipset iso_client 926jamvm jffs-tools jpegview jquery-ui kendin-config kismet klaxon kmod 927l2tpd lcd ledcmd ledcon lha lilo lirc lissa load loattach 928lpr lrpstat lrzsz mail mbus mgetty microwin ModemManager msntp musicbox 929nooom null openswan openvpn palmbot pam_* pcmcia-cs playrt plugdaemon pop3proxy 930potrace qspitest quagga radauth 931ramimage readprofile rdate readprofile routed rrdtool rtc-ds1302 932sendip ser sethdlc setmac setserial sgutool sigs siproxd slattach 933smtpclient snmpd net-snmp snortrules speedtouch squashfs scep sslwrap stp 934stunnel tcpblast tcpdump tcpwrappers threaddemos tinylogin tinyproxy 935tpt tripwire unrar unzoo version vpnled w3cam xl2tpd zebra 936</p></b></blockquote> 937 938<p>This stuff is all over the place: arj, lha, rar, and zoo are DOS archivers, 939ethattach describes itself as just "a network tool", 940mail is a textmode smtp mailer literally described as "Some kind of mail 941proggy" in uclinux's kconfig (as opposed to clamsmtp and smtpclient and 942so on), this gettyd isn't a generic version but specifically a 943hardwired ppp dialin utility, mgetty isn't a generic version but is combined 944with "sendfax", hostap is an intersil prism driver, wlan-ng is also an 945intersil prism dirver, null is a program to intentionally dereference a 946null pointer (in case you needed one), iso_client is a 947"Demo Application for the USB Device Driver", kendin-config is 948"for configuring the Micrel Kendin KS8995M over QSPI", speedtouch configures 949a specific brand of asdl modem, portmap is part of Anfs, 950ferret, linux-igd, and miniupnp are all upnp packages, 951lanbypass "can be used to control the LAN 952bypass switches on the Advantech x86 based hardware platforms", lcd is 953"test of lcddma device driver" (an out-of-tree Coldfire driver apparently 954lost to history, the uclinux linux-2.4.x directory has a config symbol for 955it, but nothing in the code actually _uses_ it...), qspitest is another 956coldfire thing, mii-tool-fec is 957"strictly for the FEC Ethernet driver as implemented (and modified) for 958the uCdimm5272", rtc-ds1302 and rtc-m41t11 are usermode drivers for specific 959clock chips, stunnel is basically "openssl s_client -quiet -connect", 960potrace is a bitmap to vector graphic converter, radauth performs command line 961authentication against a radius server, 962clamav, klaxon, ferret, l7-protocols, and nessus are very old network security 963software (it's got a stale snapshot of nmap too), xl2tpd is a PPP over UDP 964tunnel (rfc 2661), zebra is the package quagga replaced, 965lilo is the x86-only bootloader that predated grub (and recently discontinued 966development), lissa is a "framebuffer graphics demo" from 9671998, the squashfs package here is the out of tree patches for 2.4 kernels 968and such before the filesystem was merged upstream (as opposed to the 969squashfs-new package which is a snapshot of the userspace tool from 2011), 970load is basically "dd file /dev/spi", version is basically "cat /proc/version", 971microwin is a port of the WinCE graphics API to Linux, scep is a 2003 972implementation of an IETF draft abandoned in 2010, tpt depends on 973Andrew Morton's 15 year old unmerged "timepegs" kernel patch using the pentium 974cycle counter, vpnled controls a light that reboots systems (what?), 975w3cam is a video4linux 1.0 client (v4l2 showed up during 2.5 and support for 976the old v4l1 was removed in 2.6.38 back in 2011), busybox ate tinylogin 977over a decade ago, lrpstat is a java network monitor 978from 2001, lrzsz is zmodem/ymodem/zmodem, msntp and stp implement rfc2030 979meaning it overflows in 2036 (the package was last updated in 2000), rdate 980is rfc 868 meaning it also overflows in 2036 (which is why ntp was invented 981a few decades back), reiserfsprogs development stopped abruptly after 982Hans Reiser was convicted of murdering his wife Nina (denying it on the 983stand and then leading them to the body as part of his plea bargain during 984sentencing)... 985</p> 986 987<p>Seriously, there's a lot of crap in there. It's hard to analyze most 988of it far enough to prove it _doesn't_ do anything.</p> 989 990<h3>Non-toybox programs</h3> 991 992<p>The following software may actually still do something intelligible 993(although the package versions tend to be years out of date), but 994it's not a direction toybox has chosen to go in.</p> 995 996<p>There are several programming languages (<b>bash, lua, jamvm, tinytcl, 997perl, python</b>) in there. Maybe someone somewhere wants a 2008 release of a 998java virtual machine tested to work on nommu systems (jamvm), but it's out 999of scope for toybox.</p> 1000 1001<p>A bunch of benchmark programs: <b>cpu, dhrystone, mathtest, nbench, netperf, 1002netpipe, and whetstone</b>.</p> 1003 1004<p>A bunch of web servers: <b>appWeb, boa, fnord (via tcpserver), goahead, httpd, 1005mini_httpd, and thttpd</b>.</p> 1006 1007<p>A bunch of shells: <b>msh</b> is a clever (I.E. obfuscated) little shell, 1008<b>nwsh</b> is "new shell" (that's what it called itself in 1999 anyway), 1009<b>sash</b> is another shell with a bunch of builtins (ls, ps, df, cp, date, reboot, 1010and shutdown, this roadmap analyzes it <a href="#sash">elsewhere</a>), 1011<b>sh</b> is a very old minix shell fork, and <b>tcsh</b> is also a shell.</p> 1012 1013<p>Also in this category, we have:</p> 1014 1015<blockquote><b><p> 1016dropbear jffs-tools jpegview kexec-tools bind ctorrent 1017iperf iproute2 ip-sentinel iptables kexec 1018nmap oggplay openssl oprofile p7zip pppd pptp play vplay 1019hdparm mp3play at clock 1020mtd-utils mysql logrotate brcfg bridge-utils flashw 1021ebtables etherwake ethtool expect gdb gdbserver hostapd 1022lm_sensors load netflash netstat-nat 1023radvd recover rootloader resolveip rp-pppoe 1024rsyslog rsyslogd samba smbmount squashfs-new squid ssh strace tip 1025uboot-envtools ulogd usbhubctrl vconfig vixie-cron watchdogd 1026wireless_tools wpa_supplicant 1027</p></b></blockquote> 1028 1029<p>An awful lot of those are borderline: play and vplay are wav file 1030audio players, there's oprofile _and_ readprofile (which just reads kernel 1031profiling data from /proc/profile), 1032radvd is a "routr advertisement daemon" (ipv6 stateless autoconf), 1033ctorrent is a bittorent client, 1034lm_sensors is hardware (heat?) monitoring, 1035resolveip is dig only less so, 1036rp-pppoe is ppp over ethernet, 1037ebtables is an ethernet version of iptables (for bridging), 1038their dropbear is from 2012, and that ssh version is from 2011 1039(which means it's about nine months too _old_ to have the heartbleed bug). 1040There's both ulogd and ulogd2 (no idea why), and pppd is version 2.4 but 1041there's a ppd-2.3 directory also.</p> 1042 1043<p>Lots of flash stuff: 1044flashw is a flash writer, load is an spi flash loader, netflash writes 1045to flash via tftp, 1046recover is also a reflash daemon intended to come up when the system can't boot, 1047rootloader seems to be another reflash daemon but without dhcp.</p> 1048 1049<h3>Already in roadmap</h3> 1050 1051<p>The following packages contain commands already in the toybox roadmap:</p> 1052 1053<blockquote><b><p> 1054agetty cal cksum cron dhcpcd dhcpcd-new dhcpd dhcp-isc dosfstools e2fsprogs 1055elvis-tiny levee fdisk fileutils ftp ftpd grep hd hwclock inetd init ntp 1056iputils login module-init-tools netcat shutils ntpdate lspci ping procps 1057proftpd rsync shadow shutils stty sysutils telnet telnetd tftp tftpd traceroute 1058unzip wget mawk net-tools 1059</p></b></blockquote> 1060 1061<p>There are some duplicates in there, levee is a tiny vi implementation 1062like elvis-tiny, ntp and ntpdate overlap, etc.</p> 1063 1064<p>Verdict: We don't really need to do a whole lot special for nommu 1065systems, just get the existing toybox roadmap working on nommu and 1066we're good. The uClinux project can rest in peace.</p> 1067 1068<hr /> 1069<h2>Requests:</h2> 1070 1071<p>The following additional commands have been requested (and often submitted) 1072by various users. I _really_ need to clean up this section.</p> 1073 1074<p>Also:</p> 1075<blockquote><b> 1076<span id=request> 1077dig freeramdisk getty halt hexdump hwclock klogd modprobe ping ping6 pivot_root 1078poweroff readahead rev sfdisk sudo syslogd taskset telnet telnetd tracepath 1079traceroute unzip usleep vconfig zip free login modinfo unshare netcat help w 1080ntpd iwconfig iwlist rdate 1081dos2unix unix2dos catv clear 1082pmap realpath setsid timeout truncate 1083mkswap swapon swapoff 1084count oneit fstype 1085acpi blkid eject pwdx 1086sulogin rfkill bootchartd 1087arp makedevs sysctl killall5 crond crontab deluser last mkpasswd watch 1088blockdev rpm2cpio arping brctl dumpleases fsck 1089tcpsvd tftpd 1090factor fallocate fsfreeze inotifyd lspci nbd-client partprobe strings 1091base64 mix 1092reset hexedit nsenter shred 1093fsync insmod ionice lsmod lsusb rmmod vmstat xxd top iotop 1094lsof ionice compress dhcp dhcpd addgroup delgroup host iconv ip 1095ipcrm ipcs netstat openvt 1096deallocvt iorenice 1097udpsvd adduser 1098microcom tunctl chrt getfattr setfattr 1099kexec 1100ascii crc32 devmem fmt i2cdetect i2cdump i2cget i2cset mcookie prlimit sntp ulimit uuidgen dhcp6 ipaddr iplink iproute iprule iptunnel cd exit toysh bash traceroute6 1101</span> 1102</b></blockquote> 1103 1104<!-- #include "footer.html" --> 1105 1106