1<html><head><title>toybox news</title> 2<!--#include file="header.html" --> 3 4<p>Toybox combines common Linux command line utilities together 5into a single BSD-licensed executable that's simple, small, fast, 6reasonably standards-compliant, and powerful enough to turn Android into 7a development environment. See the links on the left for details.</p> 8 9<h2>News</h2> 10 11<a name="24-10-2020" /><a href="#24-10-2020"><hr><h2><b>October 24, 2020</b></h2></a> 12<blockquote><p> 13"We are now cruising at a level of two to the power of twenty-five thousand to 14one against and falling, and we will be restoring normality just as soon as we 15are sure what is normal anyway."</p> 16<p>- The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy</p> 17</blockquote> 18 19<p>After a longer and slightly more 20<a href=https://github.com/landley/toybox/commit/07a896862ddf>turbulent</a> 21development cycle than some, 22<a href=downloads/toybox-0.8.4.tar.gz>Toybox 0.8.4</a> 23(<a href=https://github.com/landley/toybox/releases/tag/0.8.4>git commit</a>) 24is out with new commands <b>sha3sum</b> and <b><a href=https://github.com/landley/toybox/commit/6b4c32ae3986>watchdog</a></b>.</p> 25 26<p>There are <a href=downloads/binaries/mkroot/0.8.4>prebuilt mkroot binaries</a> 27now, tiny toybox linux systems for a dozen architectures, all bootable under 28qemu. (The vmlinux in each tarball is a vanilla linux-5.9 kernel built 29from the included config file.)</p> 30 31<p>The FAQ got <a href=faq.html>noticeably larger</a>, and the README has 32more links. New command features include the <b>sed -s</b> flag, 33<b>cpio --no-preserve-owner</b> now affects archive creation, 34Elliott added <b>tar -I</b> and multi-type 35<b>find -type a,b,c</b> support, Mark Salyzyn added <b>xargs -P</b> to 36run parallel jobs, the <b>ps</b> and <b>top</b> commands 37now autodetect pid length, and <b>top</b> adjusts units for memory display based on 38system size.</p> 39 40<p><u>Toysh and toyroot</u>: 41lots of new work on <b>toysh</b>: 29 commits to sh.c since last release, adding 1500 42lines and deleting 700, plus a bunch of sh.tests entries). Since last release 43we implemented wildcards, case/esac and select, brace expansion sequences 44(ala {1..10..2} and {a..z}), 45the remaining variable slice types ${a#y} ${a%y} ${a^y} ${a,y} 46${a/search/replace}, the "<b>source</b>" shell builtin, 47the start of job control, and several bugfixes. 48Plus the standalone "<b>make sh</b>" build understands MAYFORK now. It's 49still missing features like functions() and $((math)) but it's getting 50close to usable now.</p> 51 52<p><u>Documentation</u>: 53Some of the README contents moved to the FAQ, and the README's "presentations" 54section got some new links. Several new <a href=faq.html>FAQ</a> entries explaining things like 55mkroot ("how do I build a working Linux system 56with toybox"), cross compiling (how to get/setup the 2 compilers and 573 libc we regression test against), and "where does toybox fit into the 58linux/android ecosystem". 59The "toybox --help" output now lists the project's web page (<a href=https://github.com/landley/toybox/issues/50>by request</a>). 60Elliott removed 61getevent (an android board bringup/hardware debugging tool built by running 62a python script against kernel headers, not really in scope for toybox), 63fixed xargs help formatting, and taught the toybox multiplexer's 64command list output (and "kill -l") to measure the current the terminal width 65when wordwrapping (previously hardwired to 80 columns). 66If you're curious, I checked in my <a href=www/release.txt>release procedure 67checklist</a>, and 68vixed a stale link in the nav bar on the left ("statistics" changed domains). 69Firas Khaliki Khana fixed some issues in the roadmap, and Rob 70tweaked the roadmap so status.html is slightly more current.</p> 71 72<p><u>Tests</u>: 73The "make tests" target now fails if any of the tests it ran failed. 74Lots of TEST_HOST tests got fixed (checking for specific error messages exposes 75TEST_HOST to version skew, and scripts/test.sh will now skip TEST_HOST 76commands that aren't installed) and added toyonly annotations as necessary 77(replacing most uses of SKIP_HOST). 78Eric Molitor added automated github tests on MacOS and Ubuntu using their 79"workflows" thing. 80The clang asan plumbing slows some code down more than 10 times, so some testing timeouts were expanded. 81 82<p><u>Pending</u>: 83Eric Molitor did a bunch of work on route: moved it to sbin, added xsend and 84xrecv, taught display_routes() and setroute to use the rtnetlink API and 85do hostname lookups, added support for mss, win, and irtt, merged ipv6 and ipv4 86codepaths with autodetection of address type, implemented RTA_CACHEINFO 87support, switched exit paths to perror_exit(), and removed unused code. 88Ethan Sommer fixed warnings in dhcpd, removed a bunch of unnecessary 89; after GLOBALS() blocks and an unnecessary return in df. 90Erik Moqvist fixed dns setting in the dhcp client. 91Rob did some cleanup on bootchartd, traceroute, getty... 92Elliott fixed getty to reliably update utmp. 93Chris Sarra added ipv6 support to wget. 94Ariadne Conill submitted several small fixes from testing Alpine Linux with 95toybox, and Antoni Villalonga i Noceras fixed typos in error messages.</p> 96 97<p><u>Bugfixes</u>: 98Elliott avoided sign extension in devmem, and Ethan Sommer switched it from 99getpagesize() to posix sysconf(_SC_PAGESIZE). 100Elliott fixed chmod -R 101ignoring dangling symlinks, fixed stty <a href=https://github.com/landley/toybox/issues/251>misparsing c_iflags</a>, fixed the chattr f2fs test with 102compression enabled, taught blkid not to show empty tags, taught xparsedate() 103to read date's default output format, fixed a recent echo -e \0 regression, 104changed cpio -p parsing to match a <a href=http://lists.landley.net/pipermail/toybox-landley.net/2020-August/011955.html>bug</a> in the gnu version 105which an existing script <a href=https://github.com/landley/toybox/commit/fa1af3b085cc>depended on</a>, 106and switched hwclock back to looking 107only at /dev/rtc0 for <a href=https://github.com/landley/toybox/commit/70e2232ce61c>reasons</a> involving kernel version skew and vendor bug reports.</p> 108 109<p>David Legault pointed out that unescape2() (and thus echo -e) wasn't handling 110\0 right. 111Khem Raj reported that mips glibc doesn't have SIGSTKFLT, leading to 112a build break if we assume glibc behaves consistently, which led to a bunch of 113macos signal portability cleanups from Elliott. 114William Djupström fixed tar extracting long file paths, adding hardlinks 115to an archive, and reported that --exclude wasn't working. 116Peter McConalogue pointed out that cp/mv -i prompt should 117default N, and mv should only prompt when stdin is a tty. 118Patrick Oppenlander made rtcwake and hwclock default to UTC if /dev/adjtime 119isn't available, suggested watchdog catch SIGINT, and caught an 120uninitialized offset in blkdiscard which gcc apparently didn't. 121Ryan Pritchard reported that <b>file</b> wasn't getting gif heights right, 122and Elliott added gif version output so TEST_HOST provided similar output. 123Martin Stjernholm fixed <b>cp -P</b> to not follow symlinks and updated 124the help text to say it's not the default. 125Antoni Villalonga added more --long asiases to <b>chgrp/chown/rmdir</b>. 126 127<p>The symlink indirection code subtly broke xexec() so it would still try to call 128a builtin when given a path to a command (fixed now). 129The code to trip \n off xgetline() was using the length of the allocation 130instead of the length of the read. 131Netcat no longer leaks sockfd into child processes. 132Patch "fuzz" support was outputting context lines from the hunk, not the 133file. Chrisrfq fixed i2cdetect parameter reading. 134Chris Sarra taught dd not to throw an error trying to truncate device files, 135added a misshing fflush() to lib/password.c, fixed a parse error in logger 136preventing local facility logging from working right, taught init 137to reload inittab when it receives SIGHUP, and fixed a memory leak in tar.</p> 138 139<p><u>Library</u>: 140New xvdaemon() function daemonizing on nommu systems, to wean commands 141off daemon() which requires TOYBOX_FORK. 142Teach sendfile_len() to use copy_file_range() when available, with compile 143time probe. Fix xsignal_all_killers() to install the correct handler. 144Rob switched dirtree_path() to a non-recursive implementation, and 145taught dirtree that a top level entry named "" is equivalent to 146"." but should not show up in dirtree_path(), 147read_password() now reads from tty device rather than stdin, and handles ctrl-c and ctrl-d, and 148human_readable() now has HR_NODOT so it can print single digit numbers without going "0.0". 149Petri Gynther increased the vmstat column sizes so it didn't fit 150in 80 columns anymore. 151Elliott added UTC offset support to xparsedate().</p> 152 153<p><u>Infrastructure</u>: 154mkroot now only passes --no-preserve-owner to cpio (so initramfs files 155belong to root rather than whichever user ran the build) when using toybox's 156version, because the other one is brain-damaged and errors out not 157understanding it. (It understands it for extract, but not create. Yes really.) 158New PENDING variable you can set to enable more than just sh and route out 159of pending. 160The "make distclean" no longer deletes root_download (where mkroot's "extra plumbing" 161file saves source code downloads it tarballs, such as dropbear).</p> 162 163<p><u>Cleanup</u>: 164Cleanup openvt (35 lines added, 78 lines removed) 165Cleanup blkdiscard so lib/args.c parses the -o and -l numbers, which means 16632 bit systems are limited to 2 gigabyte sizes which is a TODO item systemwide. 167oneit now uses flag macros and mentions -rn in the help. demo-utf8towc 168now has main.c call setlocale for it. 169Some cleanup on stty.</p> 170 171<a name="11-05-2020" /><a href="#11-05-2020"><hr><h2><b>May 11, 2020</b></h2></a> 172<blockquote> 173<p>Ford: Ah. A 174<a href=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WSsR419HBpQ>towel</a>. 175Keep this and guard it with your life.</p> 176<p>Arthur: Huh?</p> 177<p>Ford: Listen, it's a tough universe. There's all sorts of people and things 178trying to do you, kill you, rip you off, everything. If you're going to 179survive out there, you've really got to know where your 180<a href=towel.jpg>towel</a> is.</p> 181<p>- The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.</p> 182</blockquote> 183 184<p>Despite everything <a href=downloads/toybox-0.8.3.tar.gz>Toybox 0.8.3</a> 185(<a href=https://github.com/landley/toybox/releases/tag/0.8.3>git commit</a>) 186is finally out, with new commands <b>rtcwake</b> from Elliott Hughes and 187<b>blkdiscard</b> from Patrick Oppenlander. 188The big news is "<b>make root</b>" now boots to a shell prompt, 189with toysh making it all the way through toyroot's init script. 190(Some people were looking forward to <b>patch --fuzz</b> support too.)</p> 191 192<p><u>Toyroot</u>: <b>make root</b> now does what it says on the tin, it 193builds a bootable toybox-based Linux system using two source 194packages (toybox and linux). The trivial version is "make root && sudo chroot 195root/host/fs /init". Here's 196a <a href=http://lists.landley.net/pipermail/toybox-landley.net/2020-April/011667.html>post with instructions</a> if you want to know how to build the 197cross compilers for testing the various architectures. The self-contained 198<a href=https://github.com/landley/toybox/blob/0.8.3/scripts/mkroot.sh>script 199that builds a simple bootable Linux system</a> is 250 lines long, and 200should be easy to read if you want to know how it works.</p> 201 202<p>It also has basic module support, meaning arguments that aren't X=Y variable 203assignments are the names of scripts to run to build more 204packages at the end of the build. I checked in an <a href=https://github.com/landley/toybox/blob/master/scripts/root/dropbear>example package</a>, 205and there's generic "download and extract source tarballs" 206<a href=https://github.com/landley/toybox/blob/master/scripts/root/plumbing>plumbing</a> available to such modules. 207(The Makefile doesn't know how to pass module names through to the script, 208so instead of "make root" you have to 209call the script directly, ala "scripts/mkroot.sh CROSS=sh4 LINUX=~/linux dropbear".)</p> 210 211<p>The resulting root filesystem now uses /root as the home 212dir for UID 0, and creates /dev/fd and /dev/shm in devtmpfs. The build works 213around a kernel 214build bug where "make distclean" doesn't work in a "cp -sfR" symlink 215directory. (The bug meant if you pointed LINUX= at unclean source, it was 216unhappy, so now it distcleans the source directory before copying it. This 217modifies said source directory, which is not ideal, but as usual the kernel guys 218<a href=http://lkml.iu.edu/hypermail/linux/kernel/2002.2/00083.html>ignored 219the bug report</a>, so a workaround was required.) 220The CROSS=all build announces each target in the title bar, puts 221its logs into root/log, and has better trap handling to stop with one 222ctrl-c. 223Since last release it uses a more concise config format for the various kernel 224arch targets (which shrank the script by about 50%), and merged 225the old (now removed) scripts/cross.sh into the main script so 226"make CROSS=armv7l LINUX=~/linux" is 227literally just a call to "scripts/mkroot.sh CROSS=armv7l LINUX=~/linux" now.</p> 228 229<p>As for <b>scripts/mcm-buildall.sh</b> building cross compilers, 230of COURSE gcc 8.3 requires a different configuration to build the same 231toolchain as previous versions, it's gcc. It now builds a proper 232nommu libc for sh2eb without a broken fork() call in it that can never 233be used but prevents compile-time probes from detecting nommu, 234and checks that the cross compiler completed before trying to build 235the native compiler.</p> 236 237<p>This was all tested with a recent 238<a href=https://github.com/richfelker/musl-cross-make/commit/5086175f2902>version</a> 239of musl-cross-make with the top level Makefile 240edited to use BINUTILS_VER = 2.32 because the newer one 241<a href=https://www.spinics.net/lists/linux-sh/msg56844.html>breaks the kernel 242build</a> 243and LINUX_VER = 4.19.90 because the default musl-cross-make config uses an 244out-of-tree headers package for some reason (those who forget history are 245<a href=https://lkml.org/lkml/2006/4/28/194>doomed to repeat it</a>) which 246breaks m68k and s390x. I won't post binaries of the resulting toolchains 247because they're GPLv3, but <a href=https://musl.cc/>Thalheim might</a>. 248(I've also <a href=http://lists.landley.net/pipermail/toybox-landley.net/2020-May/011673.html>test built</a> 249with the Android NDK, but bionic's startup code currently segfaults before 250calling main() if it can't open /dev/null, and the kernel guys 251<a href=https://lkml.org/lkml/2017/9/13/651>ignored my patches</a> to 252make CONFIG_DEVTMPFS_MOUNT work in initramfs.)</p> 253 254<p>At the moment toyroot cheats and uses two commands out of pending: toysh 255is about 80% of the way to being useful but still missing some 256obvious features like function support, job and terminal control, command 257history, $((math)), wildcard expansion... plus a lot of bash features like array 258variables, so it isn't out of pending yet. And route needs to be redone to use the 259netlink interface that can handle multiple routing tables. For the moment 260scripts/mkroot.sh adds both of them to defconfig if you haven't already 261got a .config when you run it. (If you build and can't boot, your .config 262probably hasn't got CONFIG_SH switched on. Fix it in menuconfig, or 263rm .config and try gain.)</p> 264 265<p><u>New toybox features</u>: 266Elliott taught <b>patch</b> to understand [FILE [PATCH]] arguments, made 267<b>cal</b> highlight the current day, added -T to <b>cp</b>/<b>mv</b>, 268did a lot of work on <b>lsattr</b>/<b>chattr</b> (including adding -p 269and "chattr ="), added tar --absolute-names, taught <b>id</b> to 270support numeric lookup and handle unknown groups, made -G show all 271groups, and removed context= from -Z. 272Rob added <b>patch -F</b> (fuzz factor) support and <b>help -u</b> (usage only), 273taught <b>echo -e</b> about bash extensions like \uXXXX unicode escapes, 274<b>netcat -L</b> no longer automatically includes stderr (new -E 275option does that), 276<b>setsid</b> now uses -c (like the man page says) instead of -t, and added 277-w (wait) and -d (detach from tty). 278Andrew Ilijic added <b>ls -w</b>, removed trailing whitespace on output, 279and added tests for -C and -x.</p> 280 281<p><u>Library</u>: 282another fix to 32 bit option parsing of long long optflag values, 283remove getdirname() and just use the libc function (which modifies 284its argument, but we don't have to free a malloc), 285dlist_terminate() can now be called repeatedly on the same list, 286new relative_path() function finds path from one directory to another, 287and readfd() works like readfile() but on an already open fd. 288Use MPATH macros in mkpathat(). Elliott added macOS versions of 289dev_minor()/dev_major()/makedev() to portability.c, 290implemented posix_fallocate() for macOS, removed a 291leftover uClibc workaround in fallocate that was breaking macOS, 292and moved the table of ELF architectures from file to lib/lib.c (so 293readelf can share). 294Park Ju Hyung pointed out the fast path of fdlength() was commented out, 295and we switched it to the 64 bit API while we were there (and then Elliott 296added macOS support). 297Joeky taught file to recognize 7z archives.</p> 298 299<p><u>Pending</u>: 300The shell got a bunch of work: standalone "make sh" now includes the 301multiplexer for builtin commands like "exit" and "cd". Added MAYFORK annotation 302for commands that exist in the $PATH but can also be run within the shell 303process (and sometimes have different behavior within the shell): 304currently applied to help, echo, false, kill, printf, pwd, test, time, and 305true.</p> 306 307<p>Elliott added new commands <b>getopt</b> and <b>readelf</b>. 308Jarno Mäkipää taught wget how to follow http 301 and 302 redirects, 309and did lots of work on vi. (Elliott also did work on vi.) 310Gavin Howard fixed a comparison bug in bc. 311Ethan Sommer fixed numerous small issues (including several build 312warnings and FLAG() macro conversions).</p> 313 314<p><u>Bugfixes</u>: 315<b>tar</b> extract now deletes files and symlinks where it's making a directory, 316<b>find -L -type -l</b> now finds dangling symlinks, extra #ifdefs in 317portability.h prevent old gcc versions from barfing on __has_include(), 318xgetline() now returns NULL at EOF, tee with no arguments was 319writing to stdout twice, setsid works on nommu (I.E. vfork) now, 320<b>netcat -L</b> no longer accumulates zombie processes, 321<b>sntp</b> now uses adjtimex instead of adjtime (to build on bionic). 322xcreate_stdio() was checking WARN_ONLY in the wrong field (and tar was 323passing it in the wrong field, so it worked there). 324Several people wrestled with the <b>xargs</b> "argument too long" problem. 325Alessio Balsini fixed memory leaks in loopback_setup() and "wayling" 326added a missing continue to losetup. 327Elliott fixed xargs -E, various things in modinfo, 328added an error check to gzip when using zlib (which copies non-gzip data to 329the output verbatim for some reason), 330found an case where dirtree could use 331uninitialized data and silenced "Invalid argument" warnings (triggered by 332Android's selinux policies making stat() and readlink() fail), 333fixed locale support in macOS (both in iconv 334and in main.c), taught stat to show filesystem time on macOS, 335fixed a 32 bit truncation in sntp, fixed a memory access one byte outside 336of its array in patch.c, removed the cpio --trailer option, 337and widened the pid display fields in ps to 3386 digits. Rich Felker fixed find.c assuming 339time_t is a long (y2038 issue on 32 bit). 340Greg Kaiser fixed a thinko in get_block_device_size(). 341Jarno Mäkipää fixed utf8 support in cut -C, and cp --parents. 342David Legault complained that dir/.* tells rm to delete dir/.. and we'd do it. 343JakeSFR pointed out a bug in file's identification of broken symlinks. 344William Haddon fixed cp to treat a directory with a trailing slash 345teh same as one without. 346Denys Nykula fixed rm -i not to prompt for an empty "" argument. 347SebiderSushi reported that chmod g+s wasn't working. 348The linux kernel doesn't let an O_PATH fd work with fgetxattr(), so 349Elliott switched <b>ls</b> to use the path-based functions now (which is racy, 350it means you can stat() one inode and get the xattrs for a different one, 351but nobody in kernel land seems to use xattrs much so they're not fully 352supported by the API, and who's crazy enough to use xattrs for security 353anyway). Derick Pallas pointed out an xclearenv() bug. 354Atatsulo (or possibly luolongjuna) did a lot of work on the <b>ping</b> 355command: pointed out min/range/max were out of order, 356that we shouldn't print a summary unless we received at least one 357reply packet, and implemented ttl support.</p> 358 359<p><u>Build plumbing</u>: 360The "make root CROSS=all" build announces each target in the title bar, puts 361its logs into root/log, and has better trap handling to stop with one 362ctrl-c.</p> 363 364<p>Fixed scripts/single.sh to work when PREFIX has no trailing slash, 365make silentoldconfig no longer feeds "y" to kconfig (which puts menus in a 366loop) and instead just feeds in newlines to accept whatever the default is. 367The non-git version number I keep forgetting to update each release moved 368from main.c to toys.h. 369Fixed a couple different errors in mkflags.c (one of which caused ls --color 370to set all the other flags).</p> 371 372<p>Elliott added more macos support and tests, and added 373fallocate, cp, mktemp, and mv to the macOS defconfig.</p> 374 375<p><u>Cleanup</u>: 376Rob did some cleanup on xargs, ls, md5sum, and sort, tidied up main.c a bit, 377made cp, base64, dmesg, and free use FLAG macros, 378and switched fallocate to new style global names. 379Elliott Hughes switched rfkill from the old byte at a time get_line() 380to libc getline(), made du use FLAG() macros, and mad chattr use 381standard toybox argument parsing for -v and -p. 382Several commands (help, cp) had sub-options removed from menuconfig. 383Merged realpath into readlink.c, and use xabspath() instead of libc realpath().</p> 384 385<p><u>Documentation</u>: 386New roadmap section about <a href=roadmap.html#packages>other packages</a> 387that toybox can (eventually) replace.</p> 388 389<p>Update roadmap to note that posix-2008 moved to a different URL (content 390at the old URL undergoes random changes), and link to the IETF RFCs. 391design.html explains more of the history of environment sizes on links 392and has a #bits anchor tag.</p> 393 394<p>Update the <a href=design.html#bits>LP64 section</a> of design.html to 395fish the documents out of archive.org now that unix.org is gone, 396and show the actual size table locally.</p> 397 398<p>Elliott improved the help of <b>date</b> and <b>chattr</b>, and 399made the usage: lines in the posix directory more consistent.</p> 400 401<p>Shrank the sed help from 150 lines to 90-ish.</p> 402 403<p><u>Tests</u>: 404New "txpect" performs interactive tests, running through a sequence of 405writes to a command's stdin and reads from stdout and stderr, when failing it 406reports the first non-matching step. (This for example lets sh.test check 407the shell line continuation logic prompts with $PS1 and $PS2 appropriately 408with various unfinished input lines, and that "echo hello; if" doesn't 409output hello before prompting for the next line of input.) Added 410VERBOSE=xpect to print out each read and write successfully performed by txpect.</p> 411 412<p>runtest.sh only creates an "input" file when the input argument isn't empty, 413EVAL doesn't supply -- (you have to provide your own if you want that).</p> 414 415<p>Rob added basic <b>stat</b>, <b>patch</b>, and <b>tee</b> tests. 416Jarno added a bunch of <b>vi</b> tests. 417Elliott fixed tests for <b>ifconfig</b>, <b>lsattr</b>, <b>chattr</b>, 418and <b>date</b>, added tests for find, id, xargs, and made 419the id, iconv, env, file, printf and cat tests work on macOS (and skipped 420the du tests there). Rob cleaned up chmod tests.</p> 421 422<p><u>Sheer pedantry</u>: 423true and false now have usage: lines (which you have to "help false" to see 424because they (intentionally!) don't support --help. 425Renamed get_chunk()/dump_chunk() to read_chunk()/write_chunk() in tail.c 426Elliott fixed some typos.</p> 427 428<a name="18-10-2019" /><a href="#18-10-2019"><hr><h2><b>October 18, 2019</b></h2></a> 429<blockquote> 430<p>"In those days spirits were brave, the stakes were high, men were real 431men, women were real women and small furry creatures from Alpha Centauri 432were real small furry creatures from Alpha Centauri." 433</p> <p>- The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy</p> 434</blockquote> 435 436<p><a href=downloads/toybox-0.8.2.tar.gz>Toybox 0.8.2</a> 437(<a href=https://github.com/landley/toybox/releases/tag/0.8.2>git commit</a>) 438is finally out (only two months late).</p> 439 440<p>The new commands this time are minor variants of existing ones 441(<b>dnsdomainname</b> is hostname -d, <b>arch</b> is uname -m), but about 4421/3 of toysh got implemented in pending, <a href=https://github.com/landley/mkroot>mkroot</a> got merged as a "make root" target (see Build), 443and Android's <a href=http://lists.landley.net/pipermail/toybox-landley.net/2019-August/010845.html>hermetic build</a> 444work continued resulting in a lot of fixes.</p> 445 446<p>The android-specific <b>getprop</b>, <b>setprop</b>, <b>start</b>, and <b>stop</b> 447commands were removed from toybox because they grew dependencies on android 448libraries, and since toybox tries to avoid mandatory external dependencies 449they moved to another package.</p> 450 451<p><u>Build</u>: 452The new "make root" target builds a simple toybox root filesystem, 453using scripts/mkroot.sh which is a stripped 454down version of the external <a href=https://github.com/landley/mkroot>mkroot</a> 455project merged into toybox. (Alas, at the moment it wants sh and route out 456of pending, which aren't quite load bearing yet.)</p> 457 458<p>The new "scripts/mcm-buildall.sh" convenience script builds cross 459compilers based on gcc+musl multiple targets (arm, x86, mips, m68k, s390, 460microblaze...) 461using <a href=https://github.com/richfelker/musl-cross-make>musl-cross-make</a>, 462and a new scripts/cross.sh to easily cross compile for one or more targets 463using the resulting compilers. (This works with "make root", "make 464toybox", and other builds understanding the CROSS_COMPILE environment variable.)</p> 465 466<p>Setting the environment variable ASAN=1 enables the 467llvm address sanitizer. (You may need to 468export ASAN_SYMBOLIZER_PATH on debian to use it, they add the version number to 469the filename in /usr/bin which confuses llvm.)</p> 470 471<p>Patrick Oppenlander fixed make -j (our make is a wrapper around 472scripts/make.sh which was already doing a parallel build, but if you called 473make with -j it wouldn't wait for make.sh to finish and the build broke).</b> 474 475<p>Lots of fixes for the MacOS build.</p> 476 477<p><u>New options</u>: 478We upgraded <b>tar</b> to extract some older tarballs, <b>file</b> added -b and -s 479options and can also recognize older tarballs, 480some xz archives, .otf fonts, perf/simpleperf data files, 481android boot images, and dtb files. Upgraded <b>file</b> to show the device type 482for block and char devices, the target for symlinks, and it says _why_ it can't 483open a file.</p> 484 485<p>Several commands ignore some options rather than erroring on them: 486<b>patch</b> ignores the -f -g# and --no-backup-if-mismatch options 487(all of which we were already doing by default anyway), and <b>xargs</b> 488ignores -P# (which requests parallel execution, maybe add it later but 489single threading works), and Denys Nykula made <b>wget</b> ignore 490--no-check-ceritificate and <b>gzip</b> ignore -n (again, we weren't doing 491either anyway) to satisfy pkgsrc.</p> 492 493<p>William Haddon taught <b>diff</b> and <b>patch</b> to support special characters in path 494names (via quoting) and more timestamp formats. 495Eric Molitor implemented <b>nl</b> -v (with negative and zero starting values), 496and fixed a MacOS compatibility issue in the build scripts. 497Tom Cherry added <b>netcat</b> -U (UNIX domain socket support). 498Denys Nykula taught <b>wget</b> to call ftpget for ftp:// URLs. 499Ethan Sommer added ln -t and rmdir --ignore-fail-on-non-empty. 500Elliott Hughes added <b>grep</b> -R, <b>killall</b> -w, tar --mode, 501 fixed <b>ls</b> -Z and spacing in -lZ and --full-time, 502added <b>xargs</b> --max-args and removed xargs -I (which we never actually 503supported) and tweaked the size calculation to more closely match other 504versions, 505added xargs -o and made -p read from /dev/tty, added <b>blkid</b> -s, SEC_TYPE for ext3, 506msdos, and ntfs, f2fs and ntfs LABEL, fixed vfat/ntfs UUID, and switched 507the endianness for UUID of msdos/ntfs/vfat, simplified the octal mode 508display in <b>lsof</b>, added <b>pidof</b> -x (thus making the default behavior _not_ 509be -x).</p> 510 511<p>When readdir() succeeds but stat() fails, <b>ls</b> now prints "??? ? ? filename" 512entries instead of "cannot access" errors. (Still trying to make ls / on 513android work more gracefully with the SELinux weirdness they added in 9.)</p> 514 515<p>Added %C to <b>stat</b> and made it show device type in its default output, 516<b>cmp</b> now works 517with 1 argument (implicit - as second argument reading from stdin). 518<b>sed</b> added exit codes to the q command (q123), added Q, and fixed a 519bad error message with "!". 520Removed TAIL_SEEK config option (it just always does that now), 521<b>find</b> grew several new options (%Z, -true, -false, and -newerXY), <b>ln</b> added -T. 522The argument to <b>mktmp</b> --tmpdir is now optional.</p> 523 524<p><u>Bugfixes</u>: 525The unshare probe bit-rotted so it was impossible to build <b>unshare</b> 526and <b>nsenter</b> on some distros. 527Commit 771e94e2a08 broke toybox's ability to say "unknown command" when 528you pointed a symlink at it that it that didn't correspond to a command, 529pointing a symlink at another symlink 530to make toybox run a command under a name it doesn't recognize 531(ln -s toybox sh; ln -s sh ash) had an off by one error, 532<b>ifconfig</b> no longer error_exits if the "read mac address" ioctl fails (Android N 533and later block that for non-root users to prevent device tracking). 534When the libcrypto library was disabled, md5sum was building commands it 535hasn't got built-in support for yet (like sha3sum) which acted like redundant 536copies of md5sum, 537<b>tar</b> wasn't correctly reading or writing sparse files with a hole at 538the end, and tar tzf blah.tar.xz was calling xz when it meant xzcat, 539<b>xargs</b> would spuriously fail on large memory systems (due to a missing 540"unsigned" in a typecast), 541<b>basename</b> can now remove suffixes starting with a dash, 542<b>cp</b> -r unlinks() an existing symlink before trying to 543recreate the symlink (otherwise cp -r into an existing directory will 544try to follow the existing symlink and create another symlink at its 545destination, failing if a file already exists there, which 546was confusing gentoo's package manager), <b>timeout</b> now produces the 547right exit code when the timed command intercepts the exit signal, 548and <b>hostname</b> -d no longer segfaults on machines with no domain name.</p> 549 550<p>Denys Nykula fixed the <b>ftpget</b> freeze (it was sending REST instead 551of RETR), made <b>mv</b> work with a trailing slash in the source, 552fixed a <b>find</b> segfault, 553and made <b>env</b> always exec rather than recursing to a builtin 554(on the theory #!/usr/bin/env is expected to search the $PATH).</p> 555 556<p>Elliott improved <b>killall</b>'s handling of long filenames, made <b>kill</b> work 557when killall5 is disabled (missing FORCE_FLAGS), fixed error reporting in 558<b>hostname</b>, fixed several things in <b>xargs</b>, 559made <b>printf</b> \c and \0 octal escapes work, fixed a <b>find</b> -name corner 560case (find src/*.c -name file.c) and find dangling symlink behavior, 561made some <b>rm</b> error messages consistent, fixed \x behavior in echo and 562printf, fixed linestack.c's buffer length for utf8 U+XXXX escape printing, 563fixed a race in <b>losetup</b>, fixed <b>grep</b> -F with multiple matches on the same 564line and an -I failure in the existing grep tests, made <b>readlink</b> notice 565when it has more than one argument, and made various 566fixes to <b>modinfo</b>.</p> 567 568<p>Ethan Sommer reported that <b>stat</b> of an suid/sticky file output 5 digits of 569octal stat date instead of 4. 570Rob fixed an unaligned access in <b>grep</b>. Alessio Balsini removed an incorrect 571null termination in <b>losetup</b>. 572Jarno Mäkipää fixed <b>hexedit</b> 573scrolling up and down on older terminals, and fixed <b>ls</b> segfaulting with a broken 574(non-UTF8) locale (didn't expect wcrtomb to return -1). 575Andrew Ilijic made ls put 2 spaces between columns like other implementations 576(which helps when terminals get confused and apply UTF8 combining characters 577to the space after a filename). 578</p> 579 580<p><u>Library</u>: 581Added dlist_lpop() to use a dlist as a stack (it removes the last entry 582instead of the first), and dlist_pop() now works on a dlist_terminate()d list. 583DIRTREE_STATLESS returns entries we couldn't stat() (with a zeroed ->st 584field, and ->again |= 2), but filling in the file type from readdir(). 585Coversions between signal names and numbers now include all the Linux signals, 586not just posix ones. The functions sig_to_num() and num_to_sig() moved into 587lib/portability.h, because MacOS has different signals. 588TOYFLAG_MAYFORK allows commands to run in toysh's process without forking, 589but also makes them accessable from the toybox multiplexer or standalone. 590A MAYFORK command has to clean up after itself (even in error paths) and 591can't discard anything we need to keep (such as closing stdout).</p> 592 593<p>Elliott did a big xbind/xconnect cleanup (adding xbindany and xconnectany), 594taught xregcomp that an empty regex matches the whole line 595(because FreeBSD, and thus MacOS, doesn't already do that), and 596replaced several uses of get_line() (which does single byte reads) 597with getline() (which doesn't).</p> 598 599<p><u>Plumbing</u>: 600"make clean" doesn't produce a screenful of unnecessary output now, 601rm, ln, cp, kill, and netcat use the FLAG() macros now, makedevs uses the new 602GLOBALS naming format, timeout now uses xwaitpid(), and we fixed an 603off by one error in xwaitpid().</p> 604 605<p>Elliott removed a workaround for old NDK versions from getconf and 606moved sort off of get_rawline() (which let us remove it). 607Rob undid some loop unrolling in md5sum/sha1sum (we have libcrypto if you want 608an assembly optimized version instead of an understandable version).</p> 609 610<p>Android ndk-r20 doesn't define the __ANDROID_NDK__ symbol, so we switched 611to using clang's __has_include() (which is an undefined macro and thus a NOP 612resolving to false on gcc).</p> 613 614<p><u>Pending</u>: 615Rob did a lot of work on toysh: continuation support works (it knows when to ask 616for another line of text and when to run what it's got), as do 617nested if/else/elif statements, and while and for loops (supporting "for i" 618and "for i in", but not for ((;;)) yet). 619It parses pipes and redirections but doesn't perform them yet. 620The next big todo chunk is environment variable resolution. 621</p> 622 623<p>Gavin Howard fixed some bugs in bc, such as not returning error when raising 624zero to a negative power. 625Jarno Mäkipää continues to extend vi, adding yank and push, support for tabs, 626rewriting delete, changing the drawing code, etc. Elliott also added several 627fixes and features to vi, 628fixed host to cope with large DNS responses, switched crontab to 629use getline(), did work on man, fixed fixed several things in dd, 630implemented diff --strip-trailing-cr and made diff not need /tmp. 631Mike Bennett added extended attribute support to ip.c's route change.</p> 632 633<p><u>Test suite</u>: The killall and pgrep tests were having occasional 634spurious failures due to a race condition (the test script would fork() 635to call sleep and for just a moment there were two instances of the test 636script, reporting an extra process if killall or pgrep ran then). 637 638<p>Elliott Hughes did a lot of work on the test suite: add kill -l tests, 639make losetup.test notice (and skip) if loopback 640devices area already in use, blkid.test can TEST_HOST e2fsprogs blkid now, 641modinfo.test notices (and skips) if there's no /proc/modules or modules 642directory, ifconfig.test skips if "dummy0 up" fails and disabled the 643pointtopoint tests entirely (the kernel never supported it?), 644truncate.test is less 645confused by SELinux, hostname.test can run some tests as non-root, 646addressed a race condition in killall.test on slow systems, 647made chgrp.test, chown.test, and tar.test handle an empty /etc/passwd or /etc/group 648(we were checking whether they were _there_ but some android devics have 649empty ones), 650fixed a couple things in env.test, extended killall.test to explicitly cover 651long and short names (and not assume the shell is /bin/sh), taught split.test not to rely on bash process substitution, 652added missing TZ=utc to touch.test, fixed cp.test to pass for root 653or with a restrictive umask, and fixed the FAILCOUNT arithmetic to use more portable 654$(()). Elliott also made some tests more flexible (find.test can handle any 655error message about symlink loops, etc), and disabled others (such as du) 656when SELinux is enabled.</p> 657 658<p>Rob taught testcmd not to use the shell builtin for TEST_HOST unless there 659isn't one in the $PATH, work if $PWD has a space in it, 660and make kill.test stop testing the shell builtin 661insead of the command, quieted tests that were producing output 662other than their PASS/FAIL line, and made NOSPACE tests ignore the 663presence/absence of leading/trailing whitespace as well as differences 664in the amount of space.</p> 665 666<p><u>Documentation</u>: 667The <a href=roadmap.html>roadmap</a> got freshened up a bit, with updates 668for android from Elliott. 669In <a href=design.html>the design page</a> the Features section starts with 6704 new paragraphs about the scope of toybox, and a new License section talks 671about 0BSD. 672The "./toybox --help" output now explains how to do install_flat by hand.</p> 673 674<p><u>Sheer pedantry</u>: 675Elliott fixed a double close in loopfiles_lines() so strace doesn't 676have an EBADF in it, and added a missing "static" in lib/net.c.</p> 677 678<a name="21-05-2019" /><a href="#21-05-2019"><hr><h2><b>May 21, 2019</b></h2></a> 679<blockquote> 680<p>"I like the cover," he said. "'Don't Panic.' It's the first helpful or intelligible thing anybody's said to me all day."</p> <p>- The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy</p> 681</blockquote> 682 683<p><a href=downloads/toybox-0.8.1.tar.gz>Toybox 0.8.1</a> 684(<a href=https://github.com/landley/toybox/releases/tag/0.8.1>git commit</a>) 685is out.</p> 686 687<p>Android is now using toybox as part of a <a href=http://lists.landley.net/pipermail/toybox-landley.net/2018-November/009824.html>"hermetic" build</a> 688(meaning Android is building under toybox, which is halfway to Android 689building under Android). See Android's <a href=https://android.googlesource.com/platform/prebuilts/build-tools/+log>build-tools</a> and <a href=https://android.googlesource.com/platform/build/soong/+log>soong</a> repositories to follow along with development, or check the list for the <a href=http://lists.landley.net/pipermail/toybox-landley.net/2019-May/010485.html>current status</a>.</p> 690 691<p><u>New commands</u>: Isaac Dunham added <b>mcookie</b>, which is used by 692X11. Elliott Hughes added <b>devmem</b>, which replaces toolbox's "r".</p> 693 694<p><u>Promoted</u>: <b>tar</b>, <b>gunzip</b>, and <b>zcat</b> were cleaned 695up and moved out of pending. 696Tar is a near-rewrite with support for --owner --group and --sparse, 697capable of autodetecting "wget blah.tar.bz2 -O - | tar xv", a --restrict option 698that only allows files to extract into a single subdirectory, and so on.</p> 699 700<p><u>Added to pending</u>: 701Jarno Mäkipää contributed a new <b>vi</b> implementation. Makepost added 702<b>man</b>.</p> 703 704<p><u>Updates</u>: Elliott added <b>find</b> -wholename/-iwholename, -printf, 705and -context, <b>grep</b> --exclude-dir, and <b>echo</b> -E. 706Rob added <b>blkid</b> -U and -L, <b>mount</b> now has UUID= support via blkid -U, 707you can now specify TZ="blah" in the <b>date</b> -d input string (although 708why the double quotes are required is an open question), and <b>sed</b> now 709understands ,+N relative ranges. Makepost added <b>rm</b> -v. 710The human_readable fields in <b>ps</b>/<b>top</b>/<b>iotop</b> now use all 711available space to show more precision, <b>iotop</b> displays swap bandwidth 712properly (it was showing a signed field as unsigned), and 713<b>touch</b> -t and -d autodetect the time format.</p> 714 715<p><u>Cleanups</u>: In pending Rob did some bc cleanup, 716Colin Davidson did some arp cleanup, 717Uros Prestor fixed route argument parsing, and 718in bc Daniel Rosenberg fixed bc_vec_concat()'s allocation and 719Gavin Howard fixed an overflow bug in bc_num_ulong().</p> 720 721<p>Elliott made scan_key() detect cursor keys and such with several more 722terminal types, made more better about directories and non-tty output, 723cleaned up inconsistent uses of ARRAY_LEN(), taught file 724to recognize a c-sky ELF machine, and fixed timezone and daylight 725savings time issues in date and its tests. 726Rob simplified netcat and ping using new lib/net.c infrastructure. 727When run as non-PID 1 (for a chroot) oneit's exit code now indicates 728which signal it's exiting due to. 729Hadrian Węgrzynowski #defined constants for mkpathat. 730Date now uses the current time for unspecified fields (instead of zeroing 731them), and should set the weekday properly. 732Sort's -k2.3,4.5 syntax is now documented and behaves more closely to 733other implementations (silly as that behavior is). 734Significant speedup to sed s/a/b/g on a megabyte long line (it was 735O(n^2) and now it's quite snappy).</p> 736 737<p>Several cases of warning about stdout failing to write were silenced 738because things like piping the output to head means stdout is a special 739case: its output is often discarded and that's fine. And xprintf() 740and friends only checks stdout for errors so it can exit early ("yes | head" 741should not spin endlessly) without actually flushing anything. 742There's an ongoing design debate about line buffering stdin and stdout 743that'll have to be resolved next dev cycle.</p> 744 745<p><u>Bugs</u>: 746Elliott sent in a lot of fixes for building AOSP with toybox: 747support for more date formats, sed substitution of empty capture groups 748and an endless loop with -EPIPE, fixed find -path/-ipath, made loggit() 749only feed LOG_AUTH to syslog when we have a tty, gave grep a bunch 750of --longname synonyms for short options, added getfattr --only-values, 751and timeout --foreground --preserve-status and --signal.</p> 752 753<p>Top got a lot of tweaks: it no longer collates thread's CPU usage into the 754parent thread (in -H mode), hides the cursor in interactive mode, updates the 755display properly in batch mode, and accepts ENTER 756as a synonym for SPACE when refreshing the display. The header lines 757now abbreviate long numbers with units (via human_readable()), 758more reliably spans the terminal width, and says "Thread" instead 759of "Task" when it's showing threads. The task/thread count now adds up 760(understanding more kernel states and treating unknown ones as "sleeping"). 761Top now treats -o "" as an error (previously it displayed an empty screen).</p> 762 763<p>William Djupström pointed out login needs to chown() the tty, and made it 764clear the environment when -p is absent. 765Vidar Holen fixed inverted find -exec exit status. 766Rob made chgrp() stop relying on libc's printf("%s", NULL) printing "(null)" 767because a <a href=https://github.com/varnishcache/varnish-cache/issues/2879>newly added gcc bug</a> turns that into a build break, and 768fixed an outright embarassing xstrndup() bug. 769Liwugang fixed a segfault when stat's format string had a trailing %. 770A missing else in grep meant -x was sometimes ignored.</p> 771 772<p><u>Infrastructure</u>: 773in the build scripts/portability.sh now tests that the compiler it's trying 774to use exists up front. We no longer link against librt because on glibc that's 775pulling in libpthread for some unknown reason.</p> 776 777<p>TOYFLAG_ARGFAIL() lets commands return custom exit values when option parsing 778fails (because AOSP build scripts cared), so timeout --unknown returns 125 779and so on: chroot, diff, cmp, env, grep, nohup, and sort also use it now with 780various values.</p> 781 782<p>New FLAG() macros: FLAG(x) expands to (toys.optflags&FLAG_x) and returns 783zero if the command line argument's bit isn't set and nonzero if it is 784(meaning -x was or wasn't encountered on the command line this time by 785lib/args.c). Lots of commands got converted to use them.</p> 786 787<p>New lib/env.c with reset_env(), xsetenv(), and xunsetenv() which frees 788the old environment variable when it wasn't inherited from exec(). This 789lets long-running loops reset environment variables without memory leaks.</p> 790 791<p>New xnotify() plumbing in lib/portability.c with Linux and Mac versions 792(which should also work on BSD).</p> 793 794<p>New xparsedate() and xvali_date() functions allow date, tar --mtime, and 795touch to understand the same date formats, 796xpopen_both() now knows how to use existing filehandles for the child's 797stdin/stdout, and no longer redirects stderr (which hides errors), 798new nanomove(), nanodiff(), union socksaddr, xrecvwait(), 799and human_readable_long() to show more than 3 digits of output.</p> 800 801<p>Taught xgetaddrinfo() to return a wildcard address for a NULL host, 802xconnbind() sets SO_REUSEADDR by default, 803fileunderdir() returns the abspath to the file now (since we had to work 804it out anyway), and 805xabspath() uses O_PATH now (because Android's SELinux rules got more aggressive).</p> 806 807<p>Several new xsendfile() variants, including sendfile_len() to copy 808a specific amount of data and xsendfile_pad() to append zeroes to the 809output when there isn't enough input.</p> 810 811<p>regexec0() is now using libc's REG_STARTEND supported by every libc out 812there _except_ musl. (It originated in BSD and was adopted by glibc, bionic, 813and uClibc 15 years ago, and is also supported in macosx. Musl's maintainer 814<a href=https://www.openwall.com/lists/musl/2013/01/15/26>turned down</a> 815the feature request as an invalid use case he didn't think they should 816be trying to do.)</p> 817 818<p><u>Docs</u>: 819the <a href=license.html>license page</a> now has an SPDX identifier, and links to more 820history/context. The actual LICENSE file had its title line removed 821so <a href=https://github.com/github/choosealicense.com/pull/643#issuecomment-463746027>github could recognize it</a> as 0BSD. (We're still waiting for 822"<a href=https://github.com/github/choosealicense.com/pull/643#issuecomment-464380789>a while</a>" to pass before github actually does, though.)</p> 823 824<p>A new www/doc/mount.txt file describes how mount works under the covers.</p> 825 826<p>Rob consistently misspelled "canonical" and "millisecond", mountpoint 827has a synopsis now, 828Kevin van der Kamp fixed a typo in netstat's help text, and Elliott 829Hughes fixed typos everywhere and made the tense, capitalization, and 830punctuation of help text more consistent.</p> 831 832<p>New paragraph in the code style part of design.html explaining that 833"char* a, b;" is not how C works, and since you wind up with "char *a, b;" 834anyway you might as well say that.</p> 835 836<p>Given dreamhost's tendency to repeatedly delete the mailing list 837archive, the nav bar on the left links to a backup web archive now too.</p> 838 839<p>The FAQ now says why we do time based releases.</p> 840 841<p><u>Testing</u>: Added VERBOSE=nopass to not show passing tests. 842The test suite now does an rm -rf on testdir between each command so 843debris files don't accumulate. 844New skipnot function skips the next test if a command line fails, and 845toyonly function only runs command when we're testing the toybox version 846of command. (This isn't the same as TEST_HOST, the host version could be 847toybox.) 848The find -newer test calls "sleep .1" to avoid intermittently failing with an 849identical timestamp. 850Elliott added the start of a file.test rogues gallery. 851No longer call lsattr in "make tests" because the behavior differs by 852filesystem and it needs fixing somehow.</p> 853 854<a name="08-02-2019" /><a href="#08-02-2019"><hr><h2><b>February 8, 2019</b></h2></a> 855<blockquote> 856<p>"Most readers get as far as the Future Semiconditionally Modified 857Subinverted Plagal Past Subjunctive Intentional before giving up; and 858in fact in later editions of the book all pages beyond this point have 859been left blank to save on printing costs."</p> 860<p>- The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy</p> 861</blockquote> 862 863<p><a href=downloads/toybox-0.8.0.tar.gz>Toybox 0.8.0</a> 864(<a href=https://github.com/landley/toybox/releases/tag/0.8.0>git commit</a>) 865is out.</p> 866 867<p>Toybox now builds on MacOS and FreeBSD, thanks to the efforts of Elliott 868Hughes and Ed Maste respectively. Use the "make macos_defconfig" and "make 869freebsd_defconfig" targets to enable the set of commands that compile on 870each so far.</p> 871 872<p><u>New commands</u>: Added an <b>sntp</b> client/server (RFC 4330 Simple Network Time 873Protocol, a compatible subset of ntp). The <b>test</b> command was rewritten 874and promoted out of pending.</p> 875 876<p><u>New options</u>: <b>grep</b> now has --color, supports embedded NUL bytes in its input, 877recognizes binary files, and passes all of grep.test (in case you 878needed the middle numerical field of -bB, etc). 879Josh Gao added ipv6 and UDP support to <b>netcat</b>. 880Volodymyr Medvid reported that install -d doesn't honor -o or -g. 881Elliott Hughes did a lot of work to support hermetic Android/AOSP builds: 882<b>mkdir</b> accepts both --parent and --parents as synonyms for -p, <b>touch</b> ignores -f, 883<b>basename</b> added -s to remove a trailing suffix, <b>dirname</b> now supports multiple 884arguments, <b>cmp</b> accepts --quiet and --silent as synonyms for -s, <b>hostname</b> 885added -sfd, <b>head</b> added --bytes as a synonym for -c and --lines as a synonym 886for -n, <b>mktemp</b> added -t and fixed -u, <b>sed</b> added -z and -iEXT to keep backup files, 887<b>md5sum</b> and sha1sum added --status and --check as synonyms -s and -c, 888<b>readlink</b> added --canonicalize as a synonym for -f, <b>sort</b> grew -V, 889<b>patch</b> added -s its synonym --quiet, <b>stat</b> added --format as 890a synonym for -c, <b>xargs</b> added -p -t -r, 891Eduardas Meile asked 892that <b>umount</b> ignore -c. Reverend Homer added a small optimization to file.c, 893and Elliott taught <b>file</b> to recognize riscv ELF binaries. Peter Collingbourne 894taught <b>ls</b> -t to use the nanoseconds field. 895<b>patch</b> has better support for patching a file with a tab in the name.</p> 896 897<p><u>Bugfixes</u>: 898<b>cp</b> --preserve was segfaulting when you didn't specify _what_ to 899preserve (it now correctly defaults to "mot") and didn't get the permissions 900right when copying a symlink's contents as a regular file, 901<b>sort</b> -x didn't work when 902attached to a key, <b>host</b> didn't allocate a big enough buffer for worst 903case ipv6 address size, <b>sed</b> needed a ; between b and } when other 904implementations don't (we're already well past what posix says but a script 905out in the field broke...), 906and several fixes to <b>hostname</b> in a container, <b>ps</b>/<b>top</b> were 907misreading the VIRT and SHM fields.</p> 908 909<p><u>Pending</u>: Gavin Howard updated <b>bc</b> and added more tests, 910Marius Adaskevicius pointed out <b>mdev</b> -s should follow symlinks, 911Yangchun Fu reported a <b>dhcp</b> checksum bug, <b>modprobe</b> needed errno reset 912to avoid reporting spurious errors in verbose mode and no longer 913exits with status 1 if it can't find /etc/modprobe.conf, the <b>more</b> command 914wasn't always flushing stdout when it exited.</p> 915 916<p><u>Build</u>: 917<b>chrt</b> no longer #warns about the musl sched_get_priority_min() bug, but 918instead works around it. 919We were mixing setjmp/siglongjmp (harmless in some contexts but it kind 920of annoyed FreeBSD), and 921make install_airlock now adds sha256sum (because the Linux 4.20 build now 922needs that for the s390x target).</p> 923 924<p><u>Coding style</u>: 925Rob converted the rest of the option GLOBALS() to the new single letter 926coding style, and the new FLAG(x) macro is a slightly tidier way to say 927"toys.optflags&FLAG_x". 928Removed CFG_SORT_BIG (the sort command always 929has the full functionality now. The general future direction or toybox 930is to either have a command or not have it; multiple versions of the 931same command aren't worth the complexity in testing, documentation, 932or system adminstration).</p> 933 934<p><u>Library code</u>: 935The mkflags plumbing can now support arbitrary punctuation as option 936names via an escape syntax (because mkfs.vfat specifies an offset with -@), 937and lib/args.c now only sets FLAGS_NODASH when the first argument 938didn't have a dash (allowing "ps ax" and "ps -ax" to behave differently).</p> 939 940<p>Added an xrename() function, 941xchdir() has better error reporting, xconnect()/xbind() had their 942implementations merged, xsendto() moved from ping to lib, xpoll() now 943measures elapsed time and only waits for the remaining period when restarted, 944and Eduardas Meile converted several error_exit() to error_exit_raw() (because 945yocto 2.6 buils with -Werror=format-security by default).</p> 946 947<p>There's a scripts/portability.sh now which lets the build use gsed and gmake 948(when available) in more places to avoid broken host versions on MacOS and FreeBSD. 949The syntax of the "noreturn" attribute 950changed slightly, some calls to strnstr() were replaced with strcasestr(), 951we work around MacOS' lack of features.h, portability.h can now do Apple's 952endianness macros, and so on.</p> 953 954<p>Following the <a href=faq.html#support_horizon>seven year rule</a> 955Elliott removed support or glibc 2.10, and also 956reformatted a lot of --help text for consistency (removing trailing 957periods and such).</p> 958 959<p><u>Test suite</u>: 960The test suite now has its own version of "pending", specifically "make tests" 961skips test files without the executable bit set (unless you export $TEST_ALL). 962This eliminates "expected failures" (I.E. files with unresolved todo items) 963from the global regression test. Additional tests can be added to the global 964regression test with chmod +x as the todo items they document get resolved.</p> 965 966<p>Several places the test suite got fluffed out, including guards to skip 967root-only tests when run as a normal user. The testcmd function prints the 968short name instead of the full path to the command. 969The tests for the test command 970("test.test") no longer test the shell builtin but correctly test the 971toybox command. (Now say that ten times fast.)</p> 972 973<p>Bash version skew required replacing "continue" with "return" to stop 974tests early in bash 4.4 (for VERBOSE=fail).</p> 975 976 977<a name="31-10-2018" /><a href="#31-10-2018"><hr><h2><b>October 31, 2018</b></h2></a> 978<blockquote><p> 979"In the beginning the Universe was created. 980This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move." - The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. 981</p> 982</blockquote> 983 984<p><a href=downloads/toybox-0.7.8.tar.gz>Toybox 0.7.8</a> 985(<a href=https://github.com/landley/toybox/releases/tag/0.7.8>git commit</a>) 986is out (a month late).</p> 987 988<p>Toybox <a href=http://lists.landley.net/pipermail/toybox-landley.net/2018-October/009769.html>now builds</a> with the Android NDK (r18 release), almost out of the box. 989You have to add an "llvm-cc" symlink to "clang", then use CROSS_COMPILE=llvm- 990with the appropriate $PATH (or absolute path in CROSS_COMPILE) for the 991target you want to build for. (To run it on a non-android host, you probably 992want "LDFLAGS=--static" too.)</p> 993 994<p><u>New commands</u>: <b>i2cdetect</b>, <b>i2cdump</b>, <b>i2cget</b>, and <b>i2cset</b> 995courtesy of Elliott/Android. The <b>watch</b> command got a complete (tty-aware) 996rewrite, and was promoted out of pending. The <b>prlimit</b> command is back 997(a configuration bug was always disabling it), and <b>ascii</b> now defaults y 998in defconfig (an oversight).</p> 999 1000<p><u>New options</u>: 1001The <b>ifconfig</b> command added -S (short view) giving one line of 1002information per interface, in "name ipv4/mask macaddr [ipv6/mask@type...]" 1003format. <b>grep</b> grew binary file detection, with -I and -a options to 1004ignore them or force treating them as ascii (really utf8). 1005Zach Van Rijn asked for <b>find -empty</b>. 1006In the <b>file</b> command, Elliott improved java 1007.class support and added .wav, .bmp, and android .dex. 1008Elliott also added "getconf -a" and a lot of missing getconf symbols the 1009AOSP build uses, including support for pathconf(3) symbols requiring two 1010arguments. This means getconf's arguments work more like ubuntu's 1011now (one or two arguments, not iterating through the supplied list and 1012processing each like last release), and -l grew section identifiers (so 1013the "getconf -l" output is no longer a directly consumable list of symbols 1014it takes). 1015Command line options specifying durations (like top -d or ping -i) can 1016now use fractions and units, like "1.5" and ".1m". See "toybox --help" for 1017details. 1018Toybox now dereferences one layer of symlinks if it doesn't recognize the 1019name it's called under (so if you "ln -s $(which sleep) blah" and then 1020"./blah 30", it should figure out you mean sleep 30).</p> 1021 1022<p><u>Pending</u>: 1023Gavin Howard contributed a large new <b>bc</b> implementation to pending, 1024which covers everything the kernel build needs (and more) but is going to 1025take a while to review. 1026In <b>diff</b> the android guys added --color and timestamps on the 1027+++/--- lines. In <b>mdev</b> Faustas Azuolas Bagdonas added support 1028for mdev.conf's fourth field. Reverend Homer suggested an error message 1029improvement in <b>wget</b>, Kevin Spiteri did a cleanup pass on test.c, 1030and there was a cleanup pass on the passwd command.</p> 1031 1032<p><u>Bugfixes</u>: 1033Elliott responded to a bug in <b>getconf</b>'s sed-based header generation by 1034replacing it with a more conventional array of #defined symbols, with #ifdefs 1035for missing symbols on the three libc implementations (glibc, bionic, musl) 1036we've tested so far. (This requires portability.h work to add new supported 1037build environments, but at least it works on bionic now.) 1038The <b>file</b> command now fails gracefully when reading pathologically 1039broken ELF files (the tests for integer overflow missed one), and 1040<b>date</b> no longer shows a meaningless errno when it can't parse the 1041date format. 1042Several fixes in <b>ping</b> (-w and -W didn't work, -c kept sending packets 1043while waiting for replies, and when no reply packets were received the summary 1044data was printed twice). 1045Elliott fixed <b>wc</b> column widths (traditional reality doesn't match 1046posix), fixed <b>modprobe</b>'s error handling (reported by Wen Xie), and 1047also fixed the units on blockdev --blkraget (reported by Martijn Coenen). 1048Several small fixes to the <b>stat</b> command's output (help text, quoting 1049style, leading zeroes, switch -f from %t to %T), <b>oneit</b> no longer 1050reboots the system when it's not called as PID 1. 1051Last release's commit letting $STRIP be redefined had a typo. 1052Nick Kralevich added an istty() check before calling TIOCGWINSZ (which 1053triggered Android's strict ioctl filtering on non-filesystem fifos). 1054An unstripped build (where the "strip" command fails for a given 1055CROSS_COMPILE) will now overwrite the (read-only) output file instead of 1056failing a rebuild. The dirtree plumbing no longer prints a "No" on front 1057of the filename in error messages (such as "permission denied").</p> 1058 1059<p><u>Docmentation</u> 1060Elliott updated the roadmap with Android AOSP status, towards turning that 1061into a hermetic build (hopefully with an eventual self-hosting option, work 1062is <a href=b33d37d6f735>already underway</a> on the airlock step). 1063Rob added a little more context for LSB and described the move from Aboriginal 1064Linux to mkroot. 1065The <b>ps</b> help text changed: now "ps -o help" shows the fields and the normal 1066--help is much more manageable. Ifconfig's --help text also got tidied up. 1067Our LICENSE file has the SPDX identifier (0BSD) now, and the note about 1068the kconfig/ subdirectory still having (build only, non-shipping) GPL code 1069in it moved into the kconfig subdirectory.</p> 1070 1071<p><u>Coding style change:</u> 1072GLOBALS() now uses the argument letter as the variable 1073name for variables automatically set by command line arguments via lib/args.c, 1074and no longer requires they be one per line. 1075Removed use of the gcc 1076\e extension in string constants, replacing it with \033.</p> 1077 1078<p><u>Library code:</u> 1079lib/interestingtimes.c was renamed to lib/tty.c. 1080The deflate code from toys/pending/compress.c moved to lib/deflate.c, 1081which gunzip.c now uses when it's not configured to use zlib. (This reduces 1082the bootstrap dependencies for the "airlock" step of a hermetic build.) 1083The compression side remains a todo item. 1084Added "%" to lib/args.c reading seconds (including fractions/units) into a 1085long milliseconds argument. Redid xparsetime() to not need floating point, 1086added xparsemillitime() for milliseconds common case, and 1087parsetime() now treats leading garbage as an error instead of returning zero. 1088The bufgetpwuid()/pufgetgrgid() functons can now handle more than 4k of group 1089data. The set_terminal() function can now set serial speed, and microcom.c 1090uses it. Added xsignal_flags(), and more consistently use xsignal() (which wraps 1091sigaction()) instead of signal(). 1092A new xgetrandom() function calls the new getrandom() system call, falling 1093back to /dev/urandom on older kernel/libc (made to actually _work_ by 1094Patrick Oppenlander).</p> 1095 1096<p><u>Build infrastructure:</u> 1097Updated dependency detection so "make distclean defconfig toybox" now works 1098all on the same command line. (This is nice when $CROSS_COMPILE changes). 1099scripts/config2help.c no longer includes parts of lib/ and just copies what 1100it needs into itself, improving build portability. 1101The build now checks the specified cross compiler exists, hopefully providing 1102a more informative error message when it doesn't. Similarly, when .config is 1103missing the error message suggests running make defconfig.</p> 1104 1105<a name="23-06-2018" /><a href="#23-06-2018"><hr><h2><b>June 23, 2018</b></h2></a> 1106<blockquote> 1107<p>There is a theory which states that if ever anyone discovers exactly what 1108the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be 1109replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable. There is another 1110theory which states that this has already happened.</p> 1111<p> - The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy</p> 1112</blockquote> 1113 1114<p><a href=downloads/toybox-0.7.7.tar.gz>Toybox 0.7.7</a> 1115(<a href=https://github.com/landley/toybox/releases/tag/0.7.7>git commit</a>) 1116is out.</p> 1117 1118<p><u>New commands</u>: Rob Landley added <b>getconf</b>, Elliott Hughes added 1119<b>uuidgen</b>, and <b>ping</b> and <b>fmt</b> were promoted out of pending.</p> 1120 1121<p><u>New options</u>: The <b>cp</b> command added the --parents option, 1122<b>readlink</b> now has -m to show where a missing path would be, 1123<b>netstat</b> got some updates (better nommu support, it can use /etc/services 1124names, more command line options are bounds checked), 1125Ng Zhi An added --getra and --setra (get/set readahead) to <b>blockdev</b>, 1126Elliott Hughes added <b>xxd</b> -o and made <b>top</b> -d understand fractional 1127sections (because the Linux Test Project uses that), and 1128Minghui Liu added <b>watch</b> -b.</p> 1129 1130<p><u>Bugfixes</u>: Several fixes to <b>vmstat</b>: Elliott Hughes made it work on a 113148-core machine 1132and fixed a glitch with -n, Haroon Maqsood pointed out "vmstat 1 1" didn't 1133stop and "vmstat -n" didn't print the first theader line. 1134Minghui Liu fixed a bug where <b>cp</b> -p didn't preserve 1135timestamps, and pointed out the b, c, and d suffixes on numbers weren't 1136working. Ryan Pritchard pointed out that <b>du</b> -d0 should act like du -s. 1137Filip Perich made an RFC2347 OACK compliance fix to <b>tftp</b> in pending. 1138Zach van Rijn fixed a bug in <b>xxd</b> causing incorrect translation of 1139uppercase characters. 1140Elliott fixed several things in <b>top</b> (removed spurious '\r' characters from -b 1141output, removed interactive flicker, made running processes bold), and 1142pushed Rob to make <b>file</b> work better recognizing things on stdin 1143("cat /bin/ls | file -" still won't work but "file - < /bin/ls" should). 1144Rob fixed a bug in <b>netstat</b> on 64 bit big endian systems, 1145and fixed <b>cut</b> -DF 1146(a posix compliance fix broke its ability to act as a decent awk replacment 1147because outputting all delimiterless lines isn't what you want there, -D 1148now disables that too).</p> 1149</u></p> 1150 1151<p><u>Documentation</u>: Rob added a buildroot section to the roadmap with the 1152prequisites that needs to run, and reformatted more of the ps --help text 1153to two columns.</p> 1154 1155<p><u>Library</u>: 1156FLAGS_NODASH is now set in toys.optargs when an optstring starting 1157with & has no dash in its first argument. (This lets "ps -ax" and "ps ax" 1158behave differently.) Factored out xtestfile() into lib/. 1159The comma-separated-list parsing infrastructure moved to lib/commas.c. 1160Added mkpath() for the common case of mkpathat() and #defined MKPATHAT_* 1161constants for the uncommon cases. Elliott added better error checking 1162to xparsetime() and fixed a bug in names_to_pid() (used in <b>pidof</b> 1163and <b>killall</b> and such). 1164Rob inlined the old toys/e2fs.h into pending's mke2fs, 1165and removed a rogue semicolon from the WOULD_EXIT() macro that screwed 1166up if() statement levels. The do_lines() semantics changed adding a 1167callback(0,0) at the end of each file.</p> 1168 1169<p><u>Tests</u>: 1170The test_* commands under toys/example were all renamed demo_* so 1171they don't share a namespace with running a standalone command 1172through the test suite (ala "make test_sed"), then 1173demo_human_readable became demo_number so it can also test atolx() 1174suffixes. The readlink.test was getting confused by a 1175behavior difference between toybox and ubuntu (Ubuntu's ln -sf wouldn't 1176replace a symlink that pointed to itself, toybox's would), now there's 1177an explicit rm so it works on ubuntu too. The test suite plumbing's 1178error message for a test with the wrong number of arguments now 1179correctly identifies which test it's complaining about, and it can now 1180run a test on a command name beginning with "-" (none yet but it 1181comes up in toysh).</p> 1182 1183<p><u>Building</u>: You can now override strip with $STRIP. The set of 1184"make install_airlock" commands got tweaked for the 4.17 kernel (which 1185needs bison and flex because the new kconfig plumbing doesn't have _shipped 1186versions of those generated files like the old kconfig did), and for 1187the new release (remove ping, toybox provides it now). 1188$LDFLAGS now applies to library probing (the android NDK provides 1189dynamic libraries without corresponding --static versions). 1190Elliott took a CFG_TOYBOX_DEBUG check out of an error_exit() to make 1191clang stop complaining about an error that should never happen.</p> 1192 1193<a name="24-02-2018" /><a href="#24-02-2018"><hr><h2><b>February 24, 2018</b></h2></a> 1194<blockquote><p> 1195"Arthur," said Ford.<br /> 1196"Hello? Yes?" said Arthur.<br /> 1197"Just believe everything I tell you, and it will all be very, very simple."<br /> 1198"Ah, well, I'm not sure I believe that."<br /> 1199</p> 1200<p> - The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy</p> 1201</blockquote> 1202 1203<p><a href=downloads/toybox-0.7.6.tar.gz>Toybox 0.7.6</a> 1204(<a href=https://github.com/landley/toybox/releases/tag/0.7.6>git commit</a>) 1205is out, a month and change late.</p> 1206 1207<p>This release adds a <b>crc32</b> command and 1208cleans up and promotes <b>iconv</b>, <b>logger</b>, and <b>setfattr</b>. 1209Pending added <b>stty</b> and <b>fmt</b>, the other half of <b>ping</b>, 1210and got a lot of cleanup on <b>gzip</b>/<b>gunzip</b>/<b>zcat</b>.</p> 1211 1212<p>The <b>cut</b> command got a complete rewrite adding support for multiple 1213ranges, utf8/unicode characters, and new -CDFO options. Use -C to measure 1214columns rather than characters (for double width chars), and "cut -DF 3-5" 1215selects words (like "awk '{print $3 $4 $5}'").</p> 1216 1217<p>This release adds <b>top -m</b> and <b>iotop -H</b> (and fixed top width truncating for narrow terminal windows), 1218added <b>iconv -c</b>, fixed <b>ps -T 1234</b> to show threads belonging to 1219that PID, improved <b>file</b>'s executable identification (properly recognizing 1220both endiannesses and adding sh/frv fdpic, bpf, and new microblaze 1221identifiers), and <b>blkid</b> now only shows LABEL= when it isn't blank.</p> 1222 1223<p>Running ./configure now does "make defconfig", help_exit() now shows the 1224"See %s --help" message on the same line, and several web pages 1225(about, code, roadmap, cleanup) got updates.</p> 1226 1227<p>Elliott and the Android devs added <b>df -i</b>, <b>uptime -p</b>, 1228<b>time -v</b>, and <b>xxd -i -ri</b>, 1229fixed <b>id -G</b> to only output the group IDs, fixed the <b>xargs -0 -n</b> 1230combination, made <b>find -exec +</b> obey ARG_MAX (just like xargs), made 1231<b>killall</b> kill scripts too, fixed an off by one error in <b>pidof</b> 1232that could cause false positive matches in 15 character names, added 1233gzip/gunzip/zcat tests, and taught <b>file</b> to identify more stuff 1234(ogg, TrueType font, LLVM bitcode, PEM certs, and PE executables), and 1235for some reason needed TOYBOX_VENDOR in the version stuff. 1236Android <b>getprop</b>/<b>setprop</b> now allows ro. properties to have 1237arbitrary lengths, <b>losetup</b> can now find loop devices under /dev/block (where android puts 1238them for historical reasons), and Andreas Gampe pointed out a thinko in 1239<b>top</b> that triggered llvm's address sanitizer checks.</p> 1240 1241<p>Gael PORTAY asked for mdev to work when Linux has the 1242block layer configured out, Patrick Oppenlander pointed out a problem 1243with make bloatcheck's build dependencies, and 1244xuphung on github fixed config2help building on MacOS X.</p> 1245 1246<p>Commands with locale support now setlocale(LC_TYPE, "C.UTF-8") for more 1247targeted locale support (enable character parsing with 1248utf8 support, use "C" semantics otherwise). The toys/example/test_*.c 1249commands got renamed demo_*.c.</p> 1250 1251<p>In lib.c the millitime() function returns current unix time in milliseconds 1252(which as a 64 bit number is good for + or - 292 million years from 1253midnight Jan 1 1970), and the old xgetty() function became tty_fd() returning 1254-1 instead of erroring out.</p> 1255 1256<p>The "make help" text moved from the Makefile to scripts/help.txt, 1257ls.c now lists some of its deviations from posix, and work is underway 1258to make ps.c more intelligible (and figure out how to break it up into 1259multiple files).</p> 1260 1261<a name="12-10-2017" /><a href="#12-10-2017"><hr><h2><b>October 12, 2017</b></h2></a> 1262<blockquote><p>Would it save you a lot of time if I just gave up and went 1263mad now?</p> 1264<p> - The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy</p> 1265</blockquote> 1266 1267<p><a href=downloads/toybox-0.7.5.tar.gz>Toybox 0.7.5</a> 1268(<a href=https://github.com/landley/toybox/releases/tag/0.7.5>git commit</a>) 1269is out.</p> 1270 1271<p>This is another <b>mostly bugfix release</b>. I delayed it a bit trying to get some 1272of the many half-finished projects (dd, ping, lsof, iconv, cut, sysconf, 1273the cp --parents option...) finished/promoted/tested, but decided adding big 1274things at the end of the dev cycle would be too destabilizing.</p> 1275 1276<p>A couple <b>new features</b> slipped in anyway. Ilya Kuzmich added head -c 1277and strings -t (and corrected strings' output in a couple places). Elliott 1278Hughes taught file to recognize Macintosh (Mach-O) binaries.</p> 1279 1280<p><b>NOTE</b>: the chrt command is broken when built against musl-libc 1281because that project's maintainer decided he didn't like the system calls 1282it depends on, so he 1283<a href=https://git.musl-libc.org/cgit/musl/commit/?id=1e21e78bf7a5>removed 1284them from his libc</a>. The prebuilt binaries are built against musl, 1285so the chrt command there will always say -ENOSYS. (It works fine built against 1286glibc, and presumably bionic or uClibc.)</p> 1287 1288<p><b>Bugfixes</b>: Remounting (mount -o remount,rw) should work properly now, 1289and we fixed another place ps was segfaulting when /proc 1290entries vanished out from under us (a hard to hit race condition 1291mostly noticeable in long-running "top" exiting; error value was treated 1292as a pointer). Elliott Hughes fixed a -Wformat warning in expr.c, 1293and made xargs split the command 1294line at ARG_MAX (which is 1/4 the stack size ulimit, which normal users 1295can arbitrarily increase but execve() will complain if they don't). 1296Josh Gao made netcat -l exit after handling a request, and reported a 1297seq bug (seq "1000000 10000001" output 1e+06, fixed now). Zach Riggle fixed a 1298broken URL in the README. Rob fixed env -0 checking the flag wrong so 1299it didn't work in combination with other flags (typo).</p> 1300 1301<p><b>Plumbing</b>: 1302Replaced mbrtowc() with a new utf8towc() that doesn't have a context 1303struct or care about locale. A bugfix in comma_scan() (wasn't removing an entry at the end 1304of the list) is why remount _sometimes_ worked (depending on argument 1305order), xgetaddrinfo() is now separate from xconnect(), 1306atolx_range() learned the w (word=2) suffix, and b is now (block=512) instead 1307of (byte=1).</p> 1308 1309<p><b>Build</b>: Patrick Oppenlander added a workaround for a bug in config2help.c 1310that resulted in segfaults on newer toolchains. (It was actually a use 1311after free error; the build infrastructure isn't nearly as heavily audited as 1312code that gets installed on the target; oops.) A new GITHASH 1313environment variable can force the build version from 1314the command line, and the build checks for .git in the top directory 1315before asking git what our version is (so it isn't confused by ../../.git 1316in an enclosing directory). Added a build #warning about musl intentionally 1317breaking chrt (as with nommu fork() musl now provides a broken 1318stub function so compile-time probes for its existence think it's there, and 1319you can't run the result to test behavior when cross compiling).</p> 1320 1321<a name="19-06-2017" /><a href="#19-06-2017"><hr><h2><b>June 19, 2017</b></h2></a> 1322<blockquote><p>It is a well-known fact that those people who most want to rule people are, ipso facto, those least suited to do it. 1323To summarize the summary: anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job.</p> 1324<p>- The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy</p> 1325</blockquote> 1326 1327<p><a href=downloads/toybox-0.7.4.tar.gz>Toybox 0.7.4</a> 1328(<a href=https://github.com/landley/toybox/releases/tag/0.7.4>git commit</a>) 1329is out. No new commands this time, but 1330<b>chrt</b> and <b>dmesg</b> got promoted out of pending.</p> 1331 1332<p><u>New features</u>: 1333Rob rewrote paste, which should work much better now, and added grep 1334-M and -S to match and skip wildcards respectively (useful with -r). 1335Elliott's updated dmesg has -T and --color. The file 1336command can recognize gzip now, uptime grew -s, date grew %N, env knows - as a first argument 1337means -i (posix!) and grew -0, ls defaults to -b 1338instead of -q now when there's a tty, and ls has a new -ll option (with 1339--full-time as a compatibility synonym) showing nanoseconds and (for some 1340reason) timezone. (Why do individual files have timezones?) Elliott added 1341"uudecode -o -" support. Illya Kuzmich taught head -v and -q. The cpio 1342code no longer adds the "TRAILER!!!" entry by default (initramfs extractor 1343doesn't care) without which you can concatenate cpio archives with "cat". 1344(Use the new --trailer option if you want the legacy behavior.) 1345In pending, fdisk compiles now and tar understands bzip2.</p> 1346 1347<p><u>Build</u>: 1348The "make install_airlock" target now symlinks bc from the host because 1349the kernel <a href=https://landley.net/notes-2013.html#28-03-2013>inexplicably</a> 1350needs that to build. This was motivated by 1351<a href=https://github.com/landley/mkroot>mkroot</a>, which builds under 1352a toybox airlock directory.</p> 1353 1354<p>Lots of work on the test suite, mostly from the Android guys who are now 1355running it under Android. This fixed several existing tests that didn't 1356pass, made more tests run on a toybox-only system, and so on. The test suite 1357infrastructure now has a second testing function, 1358"testcmd", which supplies the command name being tested (bypassing 1359shell builtins).</p> 1360 1361<p>Various android build and config fixes, getting closer to being able 1362to let android someday use scripts/make.sh instead of generated/* snapshots. 1363Also more work into building under android's NDK; not quite there yet 1364but much closer. 1365Use nproc in scripts/make.sh detect available processors (so you can control the SMP level with taskset). 1366Removed the old uClibc compatibility glue, it's been 5 years since their 1367<a href=http://lists.busybox.net/pipermail/buildroot/2016-December/180102.html>last release</a>.</p> 1368 1369<p>The new config option TOYBOX_PEDANTIC_ARGS checks arguments when there 1370are no arguments, so things like "uptime" no longer silently ignore arguments 1371you pass but instead refuse to run.</p> 1372 1373<p><u>Docs</u>: 1374The FAQ now has more than one entry. Commands no longer output the full 1375help text for argument errors but instead just say "See %s --help" with the 1376command name (in addition to the actual error message). 1377Elliott did a big period-ectomy on all the --help text, and 1378we cleaned up some tab/space inconsistency. The 1379non-html help -a output now has separators with the command name. 1380The top/iotop and pkill/pgrep help text now describe a lot more of what 1381the commands can do. Twitter's code of conduct page went down so we 1382mirrored the text locally.</p> 1383 1384<p><u>Bugfixes</u>: 1385Fixed a race condition in ps/top where a process that exited right as we 1386read its data returned a different error value than we were expecting (which 1387was causing long-running top instances to occasionally exit), 1388mount now gives an error if it can't autodetect the filesystem 1389type, ps no longer queries the terminal size when output isn't to a tty 1390(so "ps -A | cat" doesn't vary), date's chkmktime() was replaced with 1391simple range checks for fields (to avoid false positives from things like 1392timezones and daylight savings time), removed %s from date's help (we 1393didn't implement it, we have @seconds[.nanoseconds] instead), fixed 1394zcat's buffer flush logic (which was always failing on files larger 1395than 32k), and factor now detects requests for numbers >64 bits and fails 1396loudly instead of producing incorrect answers. 1397Elliott fixed touch -a/-m (they were backwards), and allowed ':' in 1398setprop's property names. Grep now exits with 2 for errors (so -q can 1399distinguish "didn't find" from "didn't work"), doesn't stop on symlinks 1400that point nowhere (there was an error_exit() that should just be a warning), 1401and provides error messages for files we could open but not read.</p> 1402 1403<p><u>Library</u>: 1404New library functions: strend() complements strstart(), minof()/maxof() 1405are min/max macros that evalute arguments once and autodetect type (why 1406isn't this in libc?), xmmap() checks MAP_FAILED (which is not NULL).</p> 1407 1408<a name="21-02-2017" /><a href="#21-02-2017"><hr><h2><b>February 21, 2017</b></h2></a> 1409<blockquote><p>Only six people in the Galaxy knew that the job of the 1410Galactic President was not to wield power but to attract attention 1411away from it. Zaphod Beeblebrox was amazingly good at his job.</p> 1412<p>- The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy</p></blockquote> 1413 1414<p>Despite everything, <a href=downloads/toybox-0.7.3.tar.gz>Toybox 0.7.3</a> 1415(<a href=https://github.com/landley/toybox/releases/tag/0.7.3>git commit</a>) 1416is out. The <u>new commands</u> this time are <b>ftpget</b>, <b>ftpput</b>, <b>microcom</b>, and <b>ascii</b>.<p> 1417 1418<p>We also had two command _demotions_ out of defconfig: 1419<b>hostid</b> got moved to toys/example and 1420switched to "default n" because despite <a href=http://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9699919799/functions/gethostid.html>still being in posix</a> 1421the concept of a unique 32 bit number identifying a system is something 1422Linux outgrew about the time Pauline Middelink wrote the first IP 1423Masquerading code. And Elliott did a complete rewrite of <b>dmesg</b> introducing 1424two codepaths that I didn't get a chance to unify and didn't want to 1425hold up the release for, so that's back in pending.</p> 1426 1427<p><u>New features</u>: Rob added units to <b>find</b> -atime and friends 1428(with the legacy -amin alias). Elliott added color and -w to dmesg, fallocate 1429-o, and improved file's ELF parsing. Steve Muckle added -d and finit_module 1430support to modprobe. Rob and Elliott tweaked the 1431ps/top display format a bit more (extending the USER field from 8 to 18 chars 1432and putting + at the end of string fields that got truncated). 1433df -a isn't entirely new, but wasn't documented and needed a bugfix.</p> 1434 1435<p><u>Bugfixes</u>: 1436Last release broke oneit because -c didn't get moved to xopen_stdio() (oops). 1437Rob and Elliott simultaneously spotted ps padding each line to 99999 1438chars when there's no tty (serial console or adb); now it pads to 80 in 1439that case but also switches on -w to avoid field truncation. The "tty" 1440field also sometimes had trailing debris (that's fixed now). And "top" was 1441endlessly redrawing with out tty because receipt of the ANSI size probe 1442results would set SIGWINCH, and handling that sent another ansi probe. (Sigh.) 1443And while we're there, replace "ADDR" with "BIT" in ps -l so there are 1444more than 4 chars left for the "CMD" field on 64 bit systems.</p> 1445 1446<p>Izabera pointed out that split -b and -l can't mix, and suggested seq should 1447multiply to avoid accumulating rounding errors from repeated fractional 1448increments. Wang Xiao Jian fixed a bug in sort -k. 1449Elliott let getprop use the @ character in property names, and 1450Dimitry Ivanov removed the name length limit for system properties. 1451Elliott also improved some error reporting and improved top -H's display 1452of thread names. 1453 1454<p>Josh Gao pointed out that recursive operations on . and .. could be ignored 1455in chmod -R (and the resulting generic fix to dirtree_notdotdot() fixed 1456it in several other places).</p> 1457 1458<p>Justin Cormack caught tar producing a warning to stdout that screwed up 1459"tar c" to stdout. 1460Rob fixed an option parsing bug (where switching off a --longopt in menuconfig 1461confused the parser), and another one where an option excluding itself 1462(ala "abc[-ab][!abc]" with "command -a -b") would segfault.</p> 1463 1464<p>There's some sort of gcc stack over-optimization bug where musl-libc's 1465version of vfork() doesn't get marked with attribute(returns_twice) so 1466stack varabiles in the same function after that get semi-randomly overwritten 1467when the optimizer decides to reclaim the space. So add the attribute 1468to the function the XVFORK() wrapper macro calls. (It's a nommu thing.)</p> 1469 1470<p>Fixed a couple variable size mismatch bugs that were only tested on 64 bit 1471(printf %x 64) or only tested on 32 bit (modprobe), removed some 1472unnecessary casts in stat.</p> 1473 1474<p>Continuing attempts to build under Android NDK brought up that posix 1475defines the global 'stdout' as a macro, which older versions of bionic 1476turned into an array member, but a function was using it as an argument 1477name. (This worked in the AOSP build because it only builds against current 1478bionic, where there's a global 'stdout'.)</p> 1479 1480<p>Several commits argued with clang's warning generation, eventually 1481settling on a variant of __attribute__((__shut_up__)).</p> 1482 1483<p>Android should no longer give spurious error messages 1484when you "ps -A | head" about EPIPE on output. (Older versions of bionic 1485set an error handler on SIGPIPE, but it shouldn't do that now. More recent 1486versions of adb set the SIGPIPE handler to SIGIGN instead of SIGDFL, 1487leading to write returning an error message instead of silently killing 1488the program. So we set it back to the default.)</p> 1489 1490<p><u>Docs</u>: 1491Removed website link to the gmane archive (which didn't survive gmane's 1492change of ownership). The FAQ now answers a _second_ question. (Woo!) 1493Some roadmap updates.</p> 1494 1495<p><u>Build tweaks</u>: 1496Upgraded "make install_airlock" target to only warn about missing 1497commands (unless $PEDANTIC is set) when it sets up the hermetic build 1498path. (The plan is still to implement everything but the toolchain 1499binaries in toybox, but in the meantime we're symlinking other stuff from 1500the $HOST that isn't ready yet. See 1501<a href=https://github.com/landley/mkroot>mkroot</a> for an example using 1502this.)</p> 1503 1504<p>Elliott and Rob continue to poke at building toybox with Android's NDK, 1505but it's a work in progress (<a href=http://lists.landley.net/pipermail/toybox-landley.net/2016-December/008767.html>thread</a>). Various changes 1506removing libcutils dependencies and adding an selinux dependency to getprop 1507are fallout from this.</p> 1508 1509<p>Cross-compiling from Macs needs to use "gsed" instead of apple's 1510version, so teach the build to use that name if it exists in the $PATH. 1511If you try to build without running config first, you should get better 1512error reporting now. Added a workaround for Centos' broken "which" command 1513producing output when it _can't_ find a name in the $PATH.</p> 1514 1515<p><u>Library</u>: 1516The new dirtree flag DIRTREE_PROC skips non-numeric entries so things 1517like ps and top can scan /proc more efficiently.</p> 1518 1519<a name="21-10-2016" /><a href="#21-10-2016"><hr><h2><b>October 21, 2016</b></h2></a> 1520<blockquote><p>Probability factor of one to one. We have normality. I repeat, 1521we have normality. Anything you still can't cope with is therefore your 1522own problem.</p><p> - The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy</p></blockquote> 1523 1524<p><a href=downloads/toybox-0.7.2.tar.gz>Toybox 0.7.2</a> 1525(<a href=https://github.com/landley/toybox/releases/tag/0.7.2>git commit</a>) 1526is out.</p> 1527 1528<p>During this development cycle, Elliott Hughes <a href=http://androidbackstage.blogspot.com/2016/07/episode-53-adb-on-adb.html>got interviewed 1529on the ADB podcast</a> 1530and Rob Landley <a href=http://linuxluddites.com/shows/episode-88/>got interviewed on Linux Luddites</a> (<a href=http://linuxluddites.com/shows/episode-11/>again</a>). 1531Both talk about toybox and many other things. 1532The web page also grew a new <a href=faq.html>FAQ page</a>, currently with 1533just the one.</p> 1534 1535<p>New comands added to defconfig are <b>tunctl</b>, 1536<b>log</b>, <b>start</b>, <b>stop</b>, and <b>sendevent</b>. 1537The commands <b>file</b> and <b>netstat</b> got promoted out of pending. 1538Pending added <b>chrt</b>, <b>setfattr</b>, and <b>getfattr</b>, and saw 1539a lot of cleanups to diffstat and dd but not enough to promote them to 1540defconfig yet. A new toys/net directory was added, moving ifconfig, netcat, 1541netstat, rfkill, and tunctl there so far.</p> 1542 1543<p><b>Upgrades</b>: All commands now parse --version when they understand 1544--help, but "true" and "false" should now ignore their arguments entirely. 1545We taught stat to handle "%12x" and "%.12x" printf-style escapes, which 1546apparently other versions do. The ifconfig output now shows the interface's 1547device driver. Added patch -d and --dry-run, wc can now do -cm together, 1548find has a NOP -noleaf so scripts that use that don't break, add -c to md5sum 1549and sha1sum. Elliott taught ps to treat extra aguments as additional -p 1550pids, implemented xxd -s, did a number of upgrades to file (added -HL, 1551support for ar files, improved ELF support to report android API level 1552and stripped/not stripped and it no longer prints a guessed build ID type). 1553Elliott also added optional build-time support for using openssl's 1554assembly-optimized md5sum/sha1sum implementations (leading to a new 1555<a href=design.html>design</a> policy on shared libraries).</p> 1556 1557<p><b>Bugfixes</b>: Too many fixes to "ps" and "touch" to list, from both 1558Elliott and Rob. Rob taught sed to handle s/[[:space:]/]// type sequences 1559properly, switched grep to a better 1560workaround for <a href=https://sourceware.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=17829>glibc bug 17829</a>, made sed -i preserve ownership when run as root, 1561made du max out at 2 terabytes instead of 2 gigabytes on 32-bit systems 1562(it was always designed to, but was missing a typecast), 1563fixed the option parsing infrastructure (config options that remove command 1564line options got the placeholders wrong), fix to printf for printing 1565octal digits and handling the (posix-mandated) difference between %b and 1566non-%b octal output, reading from "-" no longer closes stdin when done, 1567netcat -L works with nommu (although it may need more portability work), 1568and you can now "make test_scankey" if you want to. Several commands 1569(stat, makedeves, chgrp, cp, find) handled user name lookup failure badly 1570(stat was segfaulting if you interrogated a file belonging to a nonexistent 1571user, "chown 12345 file" errored out if you didn't have that user 1572in /etc/passwd... now they should all print/accept the number when 1573appropriate). "LC_ALL=C ls -Cs --color" produces the same output 1574as other versions (two spaces padding, -k hardwired on).<p> 1575 1576<p>Kyungsik Lee fixed a bug 1577in cp (readlink() doesn't actually null terminate the string it reads in), 1578Elliott Hughes made pgrep/pkill return success/failure, fixed trailing 1579whitespace in netstat, fixed a SMACK symbol conflict due to linux/xattr.h 1580changing, fixed ls -sh, and added a lot of 1581stuff to the <a href=roadmap.html>roadmap page</a>. 1582Izabera pointed out cmp -l and -s can't be selected at the same time, 1583that timeout was never actually checking -v, that ls should default to -q 1584when output is to a tty, and that "file -" would sometimes try to open "-" 1585instead of stdin. 1586Usischev Yury pointed out a use after free error, and that id shouldn't 1587call exit() directly. Matthias Urhahn pointed out that stat(2) returns 1588hardwired 512-byte units, so stat.c was wrong. David Hedges pointed out 1589that route could only handle 10 character interface names when the kernel 1590can do 15 (it's still in pending for a reason, but fixed). Evgenii 1591Stepanov found and helped diagnose one of the more subtle ps bugs fixed 1592this time around.</p> 1593 1594<p>Calling "make test_blah" no longer causes make to error out if the last 1595test fails (and thus returns a nonzero error code). 1596Building single commands and the multiplexer used to require a "make clean" 1597between them (because they had different config files both of which were older 1598than generated/config.h so it didn't get rebuilt; now it just always 1599rebuilds it).</p> 1600 1601<p>The defconfig build is now slightly less broken on older centos versions 1602(although <a href=http://lists.landley.net/pipermail/toybox-landley.net/2016-September/008664.html>the consensus</a> is that Centos is just generally broken).<p> 1603 1604<p>Several commands were over-using xprintf(), which flushes its output 1605to check for error (something you only need to do maybe once per line, 1606and even then maybe only in loops because xexit() flushes and checks 1607ferror() for you and adjusts the exit code if we wrote stuff to stdout 1608that couldn't be printed). Lots of little flushes are inefficient, 1609so most things can use normal printf(). (Retransmission 1610of short writes is presumably libc's problem since it's buffering the 1611output and all.)</p> 1612 1613<p><b>Library:</b> 1614New library functions readlink0() and readlinkat0() which properly null 1615terminates the symlink value (which the stock libc function inexplicably 1616doesn't). 1617The new do_lines() function interates reading lines from a filehandle 1618and calling a function on each line. 1619New function pollinate() factoring out netcat's poll() loop so things 1620like telnet can use it. 1621New functions getusername() and getgroupname() return a 1622char * given a uid/gid (and return a string representation of the number 1623if the lookup fails), and xgetpwnamid/xgetgrnamid were renamed to 1624xgetuid/xgetgid and now return an integer instead of a struct (also helping 1625handle lookup failures, you can still return the uid/get for "12345").</p> 1626 1627<p>Switched atolx() to use long long internally. 1628Renamed xopen() to xopen_stdio() and made a new xopen() that never returns 1629stdin, stdout, or stderr (duping /dev/null into the filehandles as necessary). 1630New function xopenro() opens a file read only with one less argument, and 1631understands that "-" means stdin. New flag WARN_ONLY tells these functions 1632to just print a warning on failure, and return -1 instead of exiting. 1633Misc new functions like openro() which defaults to the WARN_ONLY behavior 1634and notstdio() which dup()s a filehandle up beyond stdin/out/err backfilling 1635with /dev/null as necessary. The WARN_ONLY flag let us remove the failok 1636argument from loopfiles().</p> 1637 1638<p>New TOYFLAG_NOHELP disables --help processing (which "true" and "false" 1639should not do).</b> 1640 1641<p>The test suite now has NOSPACE=1 to ignore whitespace (using diff -b to 1642check results), which helps TEST_HOST pass the same tests as toybox. 1643Fixes to chattr and date tests. It also has a new variable $C with the 1644absolute path to the command being tested (bypassing shell builtins), 1645and a function testcmd() which is just like testing() except it prepends 1646the command name ($C) to the test command line as well as the test 1647description.</p> 1648 1649<a name="02-06-2016" /><a href="#02-06-2016"><hr><h2><b>June 2, 2016</b></h2></a> 1650<blockquote><p>When the 'Drink' button is pressed it makes an instant but 1651highly detailed examination of the subject's taste buds, a spectroscopic 1652analysis of the subject's metabolism, and then sends tiny experimental 1653signals down the neural pathways to the taste centres of the subject's 1654brain to see what is likely to be well received. However, no-one knows 1655quite why it does this because it then invariably delivers a cupful of 1656liquid that is almost, but not quite, entirely unlike tea.</p> 1657<p> - The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy</p></blockquote> 1658 1659<p><a href=downloads/toybox-0.7.1.tar.gz>Toybox 0.7.1</a> 1660(<a href=https://github.com/landley/toybox/releases/tag/0.7.1>git commit</a>) 1661is out. (Yes, I forgot to update the --version string, but I already 1662uploaded the <a href=downloads/binaries/0.7.1>binaries</a>.)</p> 1663 1664<p>The website has https support now, you can "make cat ps ls" 1665to get standalone commands (and "make list list_pending" to see what's 1666available), and a whole lot of bugfixes and new options to existing 1667commands.</p> 1668 1669<h2>New Commands</h2> 1670<p>Rob implemented <b>ulimit</b>. In pending, Elliott Hughes implemented 1671file. and Lipi Lee implemented a simple wget. (Pending also had minor 1672cleanups to more and lsof, but no promotions this time around.)</p> 1673 1674<h2>New Options</h2> 1675<p>Izabera implemented env -u, suggested adding seq -w, made factor 1676use full unsigned 64 bit math even on 32 bit platforms, pointed out base64 1677-w0 should disable wrapping, and sped up wc -c. 1678Elliott Hughes added mount -o relatime, xxd -p -r, and od -w. 1679Sameer Pradhan (or possibly Bilal Qureshi) suggested adding stat -tL -c %m%t%T. 1680Tom Cherry added getprop -Z. Paul Barker added hostname -b and -F. 1681Rob added ls -b, made ls -q work with utf8, 1682made sed -f - read from stdin, and added top -O (like ps -O).</p> 1683 1684<p>Elliott and Rob <b>added Thread support to ps and top</b>, 1685with -o TID, TNAME. We also added -o PCY (android scheduling policy), 1686-o BIT (process is 32 or 64 bit), and -o TNAME now shows the parent 1687command name for threads.</p> 1688 1689<h2>Documentation</h2> 1690 1691<p>Rob added the sed invocations to convert tabs/spaces and back to 1692design.html. Isaac Dunham updated hexedit's help text. 1693Jakob Flierl pointed out a broken URL in the README.</p> 1694 1695<p>Rob also redid the naming scheme of sed's pattern manipulation code to 1696remove the gratuitous references to Roger Zelazny's "Amber" series, since it 1697was confusing people.</p> 1698 1699<h2>Bugfixes</h2> 1700 1701<p>Grep -H and -n should now work properly with -ABC. Andy Chu pointed out an 1702out of bounds access for zero length lines in rev, fixed a buffer overflow 1703in diff -r, and fixed operator precedence in expr (although Rob is rewriting 1704chunks of expr so toysh can use its plumbing for $(( )) ). 1705Patrick Ohly fixed the too-aggressive suid permission dropping logic. 1706Josh Gao fixed a segfault when find -iname got no argument, and 1707made tail -f work right with just one file argument. 1708Tom Marshall cleaned up tar's long filename support and improved 1709the tar tests, and reported another find bug (with -iname -o -iname not 1710tracking copy lifetimes properly) that got fixed.</p> 1711 1712<p>Elliott Hughes fixed wc -c to not trust zero length files to actually be 1713zero length (/proc does that), fixed "mount -o rw,remount /system" on 1714Android, removed trailing spaces on ps -o cmdline, fixed pkill -9 and 1715the corresponding tests, made "insmod -" work, fixed top -b and tail -NUM, 1716pointed out that ps shouldn't trim numeric fields for display size limits, 1717and added some more 1718explicit "sort" calls to make pipelines so build tempfiles are easier to cache. 1719Rob <a href=https://github.com/landley/toybox/commit/32b3587af261>fixed an insane sed thing</a> the perl 5.22 build was doing. 1720Fixed mount -o to properly pass in leftover string data, and 1721<a href=http://lists.landley.net/pipermail/toybox-landley.net/2016-March/004790.html>documented how to use toybox to mount nfs</a> (warning: kernel patch 1722to fix some bitrot in the kernel NFS driver's string parsing attached 1723to that message).</p> 1724 1725<p>George Burgess IV corrected some variable types in traceroute. 1726Base64 now wraps == properly. Fixed two bzcat segfaults reported by 1727John Regehr. Andy Chu found a segfault in "sed -e 'c\'" with no trailing 1728line, and implemented mv -n and cp -n. The cyanogenmod guys pointed out that 1729cp -a shouldn't complain if a non-root user can't chown, and we added 1730the output path to cp -r error messages while we were there (before was just 1731the filename).</p> 1732 1733<p>Samuel Holland fixed blkid's handling of vfat labels, and 1734fixed a segfault when basename was passed an empty string and an empty 1735suffix. Davis Mosenkovs fixed touch -t seconds parsing. 1736Rob fixed a bunzip bug reported by John Regehr (the bad CRC 1737error message was printing a NUL argument).</p> 1738 1739<p>Not all of the commands build standalone, but more of them do now; 1740scripts/single.sh can now build a "mv" that isn't actually "cp". 1741The dependencies are more granualr, so "make top; make ps" no longer 1742produces a broken ps that ignores -A (because ps.o wasn't getting rebuilt 1743even though top had the FLAG macros for -A zeroed).</p> 1744 1745<h2>Build</h2> 1746<p>Rob added a <b>warning when building commands out of 1747pending</b>. (The pending directory is full of code that hasn't been 1748properly vetted. Use at your own risk.)</p> 1749 1750<p><b>New build targets let you build individual commands by name</b>, ala 1751"make ls cat ps", and you can run the test suite for each standalone 1752command with "make test_ls" and such. 1753"make list" shows all such standalone commands in defconfig, and 1754"make list_pending" shows unfinished commands from toys/pending 1755("make list list_pending" shows both together). "make clean" now deletes 1756these filenames at the top level, and the corresponding unstripped files 1757live in the directory generated/unstripped.</p> 1758 1759<p>Nicholas Boichat suggested switching make.sh to use $! for process 1760enumeration during parallel builds (which is both more efficient and more 1761portable), and suggested shell builtin replacements for wc/awk/sed so the 1762build loop has fewer forks now.</p> 1763 1764<p>Lots of work on the test suite, much of it due to Andy Chu. It now 1765consistently prints the name of the command being tested at the start of each 1766test (and the common infrastructure does that, not each individual test), and 1767"make tests" actually runs all the available tests now. 1768Seperated pgrep and pkill tests, split lsattr/chattr, added fstype and base64 1769tests. The "tests/files" directory now collects files for tests to 1770use, with blkid, bzcat, and utf8 subdirectories: the $FILES variable 1771gives a path to it, so "$FILES/blkid/ext2.bz2" and so on. 1772The testsuite now has test files with 3 different types of "not utf8 output" 1773sequences that require escaping, plus some combining character torture 1774tests, direction reversals, and so on.</p> 1775 1776<p>Added dependencies on TOYBOX_FORK to various pending commands that need 1777nommu conversion (which should fix the allyesconfig build).</p> 1778 1779<p>Static builds with selinux should work again.</p> 1780 1781<h2>Library</h2> 1782 1783<p>New bufgetgrgid() and bufgetpwuid() functions cache previous lookup info 1784rather than repeatedly traversing /etc/passwd and /etc/group (which is slow). 1785Added xpipe() to lib to catch pipe creation failure. 1786The HELP_ macros generated by config2help.c now use a capital prefix 1787to avoid collicing with help_exit() and such.</p> 1788 1789<p>The dirtree infrastructure got a cleanup pass in preparation for adding 1790infinite recursion depth support (needed by rm -r), updated the 1791<a href=code.html#ib_dirtree>documentation</a> to describe the new 1792semantics (removing dirtree_start() and adding dirtree_flagread()). 1793Now dirtree_recurse() takes the new dirfd as an argument.</p> 1794 1795<p>Split out _xexit() from xexit() and let sigatexit() set multiple 1796callbacks.</p> 1797 1798<p>For years the man pages have said to #include <sys/types.h> to get 1799major/minor/makedev but now that glibc 1800<a href=https://sourceware.org/ml/libc-alpha/2015-11/msg00253.html>has vowed 1801to break existing programs</a> and replace it with another nonstandard header 1802not in posix or lsb, we added our own functions to lib/ to do the transform 1803ourselves (based on what the kernel actually expects).</p> 1804 1805<h2>Portability</h2> 1806 1807<p>Debian unstable started needing an extra header #include for some reason, and 1808although printf("%.*s", INT_MAX, s) worked fine on Ubuntu 12.04 it 1809didn't on 14.04, so added a workaround for that. Typecast a printf because 1810wchar_t isn't a rigidly defined size. RLIMIT_RTTIME was 1811added to the kernel in 2008 but you can't expect uClibc to have noticed yet, 1812nor did it #define MS_RELATIME (added in 2006), or prlimit (2010)... 1813(Given the improvements in musl and bionic, uClibc support may be dropped 1814in a future release.) Given that the xattr functions were added during 1815linux 2.5, we can #include its header unconditionally.</p> 1816 1817<p>Renamed basename_r() to something else to avoid conflicting with freebsd's 1818libc, and both scripts/install.h and scripts/config2help.c no longer include 1819toys.h (to make cross-compiling from systems we don't run on easier).</p> 1820 1821<p>Debian bug 635570 did something unspeakably nonportable, depending on 1822"sed -e 'a\'" (with no next line of the pattern, so an unterminated 1823continuation) to add a newline to the last line of input if and only if 1824that last line of the input didn't have a newline, and to take no other 1825action. This is well into "depending on a bug" territory, but we implemented 1826it because otherwise Debian's install broke. (Of course this behavior 1827is undocumented, non-obvious, and doesn't really make logical sense.)</p> 1828 1829<p>CONFIG_TOYBOX_NORECURSE now disables the stack measuring logic (which 1830was giving some "security" code fits). Also we typecast pointers to (long) 1831before comparing them to avoid spurious compiler "optimizations" that 1832break the code.</p> 1833 1834<a name="02-02-2016" /><a href="#02-02-2016"><hr><h2><b>February 2, 2016</b></h2></a> 1835<blockquote><p>"I checked it very thoroughly," said the computer, "and that 1836quite definitely is the answer. I think the problem, to be quite honest with 1837you, is that you've never actually known what the question is." 1838- The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.</p></blockquote> 1839 1840<p><a href=downloads/toybox-0.7.0.tar.gz>Toybox 0.7.0</a> 1841(<a href=https://github.com/landley/toybox/releases/tag/0.7.0>git commit</a>) 1842is out.</p> 1843 1844<p>The new commands in defconfig are <b>iotop</b>, <b>top</b>, <b>pgrep</b>, 1845and <b>pkill</b> 1846(most replacing corresponding versions from pending). Added grep -ABC, 1847swapon -d (discard), mkswap -L (label) and UUID support, and find -delete. 1848Izabera added free -h and unshare -f. Josh Gao implemented tail -f. 1849Jose Bollo submitted cp --preserve=context,attr. Kylie McClain added 1850mktemp -u.</p> 1851 1852<p>In pending there's the start of a vi command, and Sameer Pradhan contributed 1853a new dhcp6. This cycle saw several rounds of route cleanup and a little dhcp 1854cleanup, but neither are complete yet. Lipi Lee did some cleanup to netstat.c 1855and Elliott Hughes removed warnings from traceroute.</p> 1856 1857<p>Lots of updates to ps: several new -o options, -k (--sort) -O and -M, 1858improved compatibility with Android's historical behavior, and 1859extensive internal code cleanup (including the removal of all 1860the magic constants).</p> 1861 1862<h3><b>Website</b></h3> 1863 1864<p>Dreamhost restored the <a href="#12-21-2015">missing 11 months</a> 1865to the mailing list archive, in the process deleting the month after 1866that. Now they've asked if I have mbox files archiving the new 1867gap (between December 20, 2015 to January 21, 2016, and presumably they 1868could also fill in the gap from December 14, 2014 to January 3, 2015 that's 1869been there since the last time they did this), 1870but due to some gmail filtering I've 1871<a href=http://landley.net/notes-2012.html#15-10-2012>never 1872been able to disable</a>, my copy of those files is spread among 3 different 1873mbox files I'd have to sort/filter/collate. (It's on the todo list.)</p> 1874 1875<p>Added a code of conduct to the README (we're 1876<a href=https://engineering.twitter.com/opensource/code-of-conduct>borrowing twitter's</a>) because somebody 1877made it necessary.</p> 1878 1879<h3><b>Bugfixes</b></h3> 1880<p>Fixed another sed bug where any ] right after [ was skipped (not just the 1881first one in the range, so [[] didn't terminate). Fixed sort -f and added test cases. 1882Assume 80 columns in "ls -m | cat", ls -L is no longer backwards, 1883and ls of files with no paths no longer uses an uninitialized (zero) dirfd. 1884Several bugfixes 1885to find (Gilad Arnold fixed -perm, Daniel K. Levy fixed "find . -exec echo {}", 1886and while we're there I fixed find --prune, made "find . -execdir 1887echo {} + -execdir ls {} +" work, and ripped out the environment size 1888measuring code that checked for a 128k limit removed back in linux 2.6.22). 1889Elliott Hughes fixed the date command's parsing of 4 digit 1890years and documented the %s escape, fixed hwclock -u, and pointed out 1891that runcon needs to exec to do its job (not recursively call another 1892command_main() in the same process). Tom Marshall reported that blkid was 1893handling ext2 wrong. Mike Moreton corrected cpio extraction's uid and gid 1894values, and added a --no-preserve-owner option. Fixed the SUID permission 1895dropping logic (which was a bit over-zealous, preventing some commands from 1896running at all).</p> 1897 1898<p>I'm told that debian-testing broke its libc so the nsenter build breaks, 1899but my attempts to install the debian-testing network cd image under 1900qemu keep breaking. Maybe someday they'll fix it enough I can actually 1901reproduce the problem. (Debootstrap under unbuntu builds an ubuntu-flavored 1902chroot in which toybox builds fine.)</p> 1903 1904<h3><b>Documentation</b></h3> 1905<p>Rewrite of the about.html page, tweaks to design.html, and a re-triage of 1906sbase in roadmap.html. Update to mkstatus.py to collate multiple span 1907tags with the same id, resulting in a larger status.html page (which 1908was previously ignoring some commands in the roadmap).</p> 1909 1910<p>Expanded the defconfig/allyesconfig/allnoconfighelp text in "make help" 1911to explain what they're for.</p> 1912 1913<h3><b>infrastructure</b></h3> 1914<ul> 1915<li><p>Expanded toys.optargs to 64 bits so a command can have more than 32 options.</p></li> 1916<li><p>Added NOEXIT() wrapper to turn xwrap() functions into warning versions 1917using the existing longjump(toys.rebound) infrastructure.</p></li> 1918<li><p>Renamed dirtree->data to dirfd and stopped storing symlink length 1919into it (this fixed a bug where following symlinks to directories 1920didn't give a valid directory filehandle, noticeable with ls -Z).</p></li> 1921<li><p>New TAGGED_ARRAY() infrastructure generates index and bitmask macros 1922for arrays of structures starting with a name string.</p></li> 1923<li><p>New lib/linestack.c for utf8 fontmetrics (draw_str() and utf8len() 1924and so on), and for tracking multiple lines of text 1925(vi, less, shell history) that need wordwrapping and scrolling up/down.</p></li> 1926<li><p>Upgrades to lib/interestingtimes.c: scan_key() now has a timeout 1927in milliseconds and recognizes more sequences including ANSI 1928window size probes. New utf8 test files in tests/files/utf8 including 1929sequence reversing, stacked combining chars, and all three types of 1930unprintable sequences (low ascii <32 ala ^X, invalid utf8 sequences ala 1931<AB><CD>, and invalid unicode code points ala U+1234).</p></li> 1932<li><p>More comma handling code in lib.c: comma_args()</p></li> 1933<li><p>Added error_msg_raw() to shut up fortify's endless static checking false 1934positives.</p></li> 1935<li><p>readfileat() can now realloc() in a loop to read long files 1936("zcat | insmod" needed it).</p></li> 1937</ul> 1938 1939<h3><b>Roadmap</b></h3> 1940<p>We're getting close to having a self-hosting development environment 1941using toybox for the command line. The remaining busybox commands in 1942<a href=http://landley.net/aboriginal/about.html>Aboriginal Linux</a> are:</p> 1943 1944<blockquote><p><b> 1945awk bunzip2 bzcat bzip2 dd diff expr fdisk ftpd ftpget ftpput gunzip gzip 1946less ping route sh sha512sum tar test tr unxz vi wget xzcat zcat 1947</b></p></blockquote> 1948 1949<p>And the remaining non-busybox commands in Aboriginal Linux's build/host 1950directory (from the distcc, genext2fs, e2fsprogs, zlib, and squashfs packagesi) 1951are:</p> 1952 1953<blockquote><p><b> 1954mke2fs fsck.ext2 resize2fs distcc genext2fs unsquashfs distccd mksquashfs tune2fs 1955</b></p></blockquote> 1956 1957<p>Squashfs and distcc are probably out of scope for toybox, but mke2fs, 1958fsck.ext2, resize2fs, genext2fs, and tune2fs should all be added to the 1959above "busybox" replacement list.</p> 1960 1961<p>Remind me to include this countdown in future releases. Once they've all 1962been replaced, the next goal is <a href=http://landley.net/aboriginal/about.html#selfhost>building AOSP under itself</a>.</p> 1963 1964<p>See the full <a href=roadmap.html>roadmap</a> and <a href=status.html>status</a> 1965pages for more details.</p> 1966 1967<a name="12-21-2015" /><a href="#12-21-2015"><hr><h2><b>December 21, 2015</b></h2></a> 1968 1969<p>Yes, 11 months have gone missing from the mailing list web archive.</p> 1970 1971<p>Yesterday evening Dreamhost's mailman server went down (timing out trying 1972to connect). I poked them about it, they 1973<a href=https://twitter.com/landley/status/678781271670149121>blamed 1974DNS</a>, I explained that the hang was _after_ the DNS lookup and 1975entered the dig info into the trouble ticket showing the IPs the DNS 1976queries were returning, they reinstalled the server at that IP from what I 1977assume was their most recent backup, and that's how 11 months of messages 1978vanished out of the archive.</p> 1979 1980<p>I've <a href=https://twitter.com/landley/status/679114451975467008>continued to poke them about it</a> but I honestly believe that's the best they 1981can do. <a href=http://landley.net/dreamhost.txt>Last time</a> 1982this sort of thing <a href=http://landley.net/dreamhost2.txt>happened</a> 1983we went back and forth for months, so I added a link to a backup web 1984archive (in the nav bar on the left) that isn't controlled by dreamhost, 1985and thus doesn't gratuitously lose data on a regular basis. (I note 1986the earlier hole in Dreamhost's archive was never fixed either. That 1987was data never getting archived, this is a year's worth of data that 1988was in the archive until yesterday vanishing after the fact.)</p> 1989 1990<p>If you're wondering why the <a href=http://lists.landley.net>top level</a> 1991list page has been "temporarily disabled" for multiple years now... you'd have 1992to ask Dreamhost. I know I have. More than a dozen times.</p> 1993 1994<a name="03-11-2015" /><a href="#03-11-2015"><hr><h2><b>November 3, 2015</b></h2></a> 1995<blockquote><p>"Alright," said Ford. "How would you react if I said that I'm 1996not from Guildford after all, but from a small planet somewhere in the vicinity 1997of Betelgeuse?" Arthur shrugged in a so-so sort of way. "I don't know," he 1998said, taking a pull of beer. "Why - do you think it's the sort of thing you're 1999likely to say?" - The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.</p></blockquote> 2000 2001<p><a href=downloads/toybox-0.6.1.tar.gz>Toybox 0.6.1</a> 2002(<a href=https://github.com/landley/toybox/releases/tag/0.6.1>git commit</a>) 2003is out.</p> 2004 2005<p>We have a new <b>ps</b> command with all the -o fields posix wants (although 2006it doesn't accept BSD non-dash option syntax yet), and <b>bunzip2</b> (not just 2007bzcat but the proper extract-in-place command). 2008Sameer Pradhan added <b>hostid</b> and <b>fsync</b>. 2009Elliott Hughes added <b>flock</b>. 2010 2011<p>The people waiting for <b>human readable number support</b> (du -hH, ls -h, 2012and so on) can thank Elliott Hughes for implementing it. (Our output doesn't 2013exactly match others' because we our "binary" mode will say 1.0G instead of 20141024M, which is a bug in the other one we didn't emulate.)</p> 2015 2016<p>The other big news is <b>nommu support</b>, tested on the new 2017<a href=http://nommu.org/jcore>jcore</a> processor but presumaby working 2018on any nommu system. A few commands don't support nommu yet, but those 2019are disabled by dependencies on TOYBOX_FORK in menuconfig when building 2020for nommu. The roadmap now has a large section analyzing the uClinux 2021project (note that <a href=http://nommu.org>nommu.org</a> is slowly replacing 2022<a href=http://uclinux.org>uclinux.org</a> as the standard repository of 2023all knowledge and wisdom about nommu. The old site <a href=#12-02-2012>contains 2024much that is apocryphal</a>, or at least wildly inaccurate, and the new one 2025is trying to improve on that).</p> 2026 2027<p>Both "make change" and scripts/single.sh (for building standalone commands 2028without the multiplexer logic) now use the top level .config 2029for toybox global settings such as Linux Security Blanket Module selection, 2030(so make defconfig before change now).</p> 2031 2032<p>Documentation updates to the <a href=code.html>code</a> and 2033<a href=roadmap.html>roadmap</a> pages.</p> 2034 2035<h3>pending</h3> 2036 2037<p>In the pending directory Sameer Pradhan added tftp, 2038and Elliott Hughes sent lsof. Isaac Dunham upgraded mdev, 2039reboot, init, login, and modprobe, and fixed a distro-specific build break in 2040scripts/mkflags.h. Elliott Hughes and Lipi Lee made netstat -p handle 2041command lines longer than 21 characters, and Elliott fixed netstat -e and 2042some build warnings. Yeongdeok Suh fixed a warning in dhcpd. 2043I started cleanup on pgrep/pkill.</p> 2044 2045<h3>Command updates, bugfixes, and infrastructure</h3> 2046 2047<p>The multiplexer's "command not found" error exit is now 127, so now you can't 2048distinguish between a command not being found in the multiplexer and 2049the multiplexer itself not being found by the shell, because people wanted 2050that for some reason.</p> 2051 2052<p>Elliott Hughes made date reject invalid dates rather 2053than set the clock to something weird (setting the clock 100 years into the 2054future makes most Linux desktops surprisingly unhappy, and ntpdate won't fix it 2055either), fixed several ls -l display issues (user/group field ordering, 2056make user/group/lsmcontext left aligned), did the aforementioned 2057extensive work on human readable number output, fixed ionice's default 2058class, fixed a mv overwrite bug, made df's columns auto-size, added 2059--ppid and -Z to ps, and teamed up with Daniel K. Levy to fix 2060a segfault in find's handling of -newer -group or -user.</p> 2061 2062<p>Hyejin Kim added stat -c %T support. Colin Cross worked 2063on vmstat fixing 2064a header printing bug and calculating the bi and bo columns in the right 2065units. Isabella Parakiss reported that sed -e "/x/c\" -e "y" added an extra 2066newline and that grep -w '\(x\)\1' didn't work, both now fixed. 2067Alistair Strachan fixed several problems with switch_root. Kylie McClain 2068pointed out env should be able to clear variables via NAME= syntax. 2069Dima Krasner added support for running blkid without a partition (so it shows 2070all partitions). Hyejin Kim sent in a bunch of static analysis bug reports.</p> 2071 2072<p>Isabella Parakiss reported that sed -e "/x/c\" -e "y" added an extra 2073newline and that grep -w '\(x\)\1' didn't work, both now fixed. 2074Alistair Strachan fixed several problems with switch_root. Kylie McClain 2075pointed out env should be able to clear variables via NAME= syntax. 2076Dima Krasner added support for running blkid without a partition (so it shows 2077all partitions). Hyejin Kim sent in a bunch of static analysis bug reports.</p> 2078 2079<p>Two large thinko fixes in oneit: -3 was always enabled (which would 2080eventually block if the child never read the exiting PID numbers from its file 2081descriptor #3 until the pipe filled up), and the signal handlers weren't 2082set up right (for requesting semi-graceful halt/poweroff/reboot). 2083Calling install without a mode is now 0755, and install -g 0 no longer clashes 2084with cp --preserve. Better error message for ls -r on unreadable 2085directories, and ls -Z now uses O_PATH (with the /proc/self/fd/%d 2086workaround for kernel stupidity as necessary).</p> 2087 2088<p>Date now understands @unixtime[.fraction] and uses -D for 2089the set-side format (matching busybox's extension for this). The seq -f 2090string now checks that it's got exactly one %f escape with the correct 2091attributes (and a whole bunch of test cases for it). Fixed a bug 2092in od that screwed up the position indicator on arm and mips. 2093In stat the d/h units moved from %d %D to the default string. 2094And patch can now correctly apply hunks with trailing context to the start of 2095the file.</p> 2096 2097<p>The prompt argument moved out of yesno() (the caller can print the prompt 2098themselves). Replaced toys.exithelp with help_exit(). Added new 2099XVFORK() macro, and xpopen_both() calls /proc/self/exe when passed 2100a NULL argv (see cpio -p for example usage). Replaced toys.recurse 2101with toys.stacktop so the recurse or re-exec decision is now based 2102on bytes of stack space used. Marked a bunch of command-local functions 2103static.</p> 2104 2105<p>New additions to lib/ include strlower(), xconnect(), and the 2106aforementioned help_exit(). 2107The testsuite now has some infrastructure tests based on "example" 2108commands such as toys/examples/test_human_readable.c. 2109The login command finally got a long-overdue cleanup (it's one of the 2110commands that predate the "pending" directory but were part of the reason 2111for it). Hexedit had an 2112uninitialized variable (of course gcc didn't spot it, it was too busy 2113warning about "may be used uninitialized but never actually is" variables).</p> 2114 2115<p>Tweaked makefile so 2116"make CROSS_COMPILE=prefix-" (as well as "CROSS_COMPILE=prefix- make", 2117which still works). Toybox is now installed chmod -w so broken installers 2118(like the bunzip2 package's) that try to overwrite existing binaries won't 2119knock out the whole of toybox. 2120GCC 5.2.0 stopped being able to compile Linux 2.6.12's kconfig, but 2121we added a workaround. You can now build uptime without utmpx.h. 2122Alejandro Joya pointed out that enabling smack required smack on the host 2123as well as target when cross compiling, which is now fixed.</p> 2124 2125<p>Note: toybox can autodetect nommu support when building with a uClibc 2126toolchain such as <a href=http://landley.net/aboriginal/downloads/binaries/old/1.4.3/cross-compiler-sh2eb.tar.gz>the one from Aboriginal Linux</a>, 2127but <a href=http://github.com/richfelker/musl-cross-make>with musl-libc</a> 2128you'll have to enable CONFIG_TOYBOX_MUSL_NOMMU_IS_BROKEN to work around the 2129fact they provide a non-functional fork() implementation that always returns 2130-ENOSYS, to prevent you from compile-time probing for nommu support when 2131cross-compiling. Unfortunately "preventing you from probing" seems to be 2132an explicit policy with musl, they also don't provide an "#ifdef __MUSL__" 2133because their library is perfect and you're only ever allowed to work around 2134other people's bugs, not theirs. So we have to use menuconfig to manually 2135enable musl-specific bug workarounds.</p> 2136 2137<a name="23-07-2015" /><a href="#23-07-2015"><hr><h2><b>July 23, 2015</b></h2></a> 2138<p>I recreated the <a href=downloads/toybox-0.6.0.tar.gz>0.6.0 source tarball</a> 2139(new sha1sum 08fb1c23f520c25a15f262a8a95ea5b676a98d54) 2140because I forgot to add --prefix to the git archive command when I updated 2141my release script from mercurial, so the files weren't in an enclosing 2142directory. (Ooops.)</p> 2143 2144<a name="19-07-2015" /><a href="#19-07-2015"><hr><h2><b>July 19, 2015</b></h2></a> 2145<blockquote><p> 2146The reason why it was published in the form of a micro sub meson electronic 2147component is that if it were printed in normal book form, an interstellar 2148hitchhiker would require several inconveniently large buildings to carry it 2149around in." - The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy </p></blockquote> 2150 2151<p><a href=downloads/toybox-0.6.0.tar.gz>Toybox 0.6.0</a> 2152(<a href=https://github.com/landley/toybox/releases/tag/0.6.0>git commit</a>) 2153is out. (Yes, git. See the <a href=#05-04-2015>previous news entry</a>.)</p> 2154 2155<p>Sorry for the unusually long gap between releases. Since last release Ye 2156Olde Project Maintainer traveled to japan twice and had two more "once 2157a century" floods at home. (Probably a coincidence.) Still catching up.</p> 2158 2159<h3><b>CELF/ELC talk and Wikipedia[citation needed] article</b></h3> 2160 2161<p>I gave another State Of The Toybox talk 2162(<a href=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=04XwAbtPmAg>video</a> 2163<a href=http://landley.net/talks/celf-2015.txt>outline</a>), in which I 2164repeat my <a href=http://landley.net/notes-2013.html#07-11-2013>perennial</a> 2165<a href=https://twitter.com/landley/status/557309224535851009>complaint</a> 2166that Wikipedia[citation needed] 2167<a href=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toybox>still</a> 2168<a href=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BusyBox#Controversy_over_Toybox>says</a> 2169toybox was relicensed before its hiatus, when relicensing was why 2170the hiatus ended.</p> 2171 2172<p>Since Wikipedia[citation needed] seems unable to do the 2173<a href=#15-11-2011>most</a> 2174<a href=http://landley.net/hg/toybox/log/tip/LICENSE>basic</a> 2175<a href=http://landley.net/notes-2011.html#13-11-2011>research</a> on 2176this point, and has stuck to an incorrect sequence of events for years, 2177I've been gradually escalating my attempts to correct them. Toybox 2178came out of mothballs in November 2011 <b>because</b> it could be 2179relicensed. That's what opened up a new niche busybox wasn't already 2180filling with a 10 year headstart.</p> 2181 2182<a name="asterisk_back" /> 2183<p>The article has plenty of smaller issues<a href=#asterisk>*</a>, but 2184given that I gave an entire talk at Ohio LinuxFest in 2013 2185(<a href=http://landley.net/talks/ohio-2013.txt>outline</a>, 2186<a href=https://archive.org/download/OhioLinuxfest2013/24-Rob_Landley-The_Rise_and_Fall_of_Copyleft.mp3>audio</a>) on why I switched away from GPL for 2187my projects, that one bugs me.</p> 2188 2189<h3><b>New stuff this release</b></h3> 2190 2191<p>There's a new android menu in menuconfig, and rather a lot of Linux 2192Security Module support (Smack for Tizen from Xavier Roche and José Bollo, 2193and SELinux for Android from Elliott Hughes; see 2194the Security Blanket menu under global settings in menuconfig) has 2195trickled in, although there's still more to come.</p> 2196 2197<p><b>New commands:</b> Added reset, nproc, ionice, and iorenice. 2198Elliott Hughes contributed xxd, runcon, 2199restorecon, load_policy, getenforce, setenforce, getprop, and setprop. 2200Promoted shred, nsenter, and hwclock.</p> 2201 2202<p>You can once again build catv now the flag infrastructure's been updated to 2203let it coexist with cat -v. 2204And on a long plane flight I wrote 2205hexedit, an interactive hex editor that implements the start of 2206cursor control infrastructure (for eventual use by less and vi and shell 2207command history and so on).</p> 2208 2209<p><b>New options:</b> Added sed -E as a BSD-compatible synonym for -r. 2210Upgraded oneit with -r (restart), -3 (send exiting PID values to child), 2211and signal handling. Added -v option to timeout, -m to mknod, -u to shred, 2212-t to dmesg, and -123 to head and tail. Added implicit "." to grep -r without 2213any files to work on. Hyejin Kim requested prefix support for truncate -s. 2214Greg Hackman added -inum to find. 2215Jan Cybulski added the smack side of ls -Z support. Various patches also 2216added -Z to mkdir, mknod, and mkfifo. 2217Basic cp --preserve support went in, but not yet the xattr/LSM parts.</p> 2218 2219<p>The toybox command now has a --version option, 2220which uses "git describe" if available.</p> 2221 2222<p><b>Build infrastructure:</b> 2223The "make change" target now saves the output of each failed standalone 2224command build in a .bad file, and "make defconfig" is quieter now.</p> 2225 2226<p>Paul Barker submitted a large patch changing command install paths so 2227"toybox can be installed alongside busybox without confusing 2228update-alternatives". (There's some argument over 2229what the right paths should be, and I'm waiting for 2230people to tell me what else needs fixing because I have no idea. I've 2231been symlinking /bin to /usr/bin since 2002 2232<a href=http://landley.net/writing/hackermonthly-issue022-pg33.pdf>for 2233historical reasons</a>.)</p> 2234 2235<p><b>Docs:</b> The repository link now goes to github, with another link 2236to the commit rss feed.</p> 2237 2238<p>Elliott Hughes updated the Android section of the roadmap 2239(and he would know). Redid bits of scripts/mkstatus.py to make updating 2240status.html easier, and the README is larger.</p> 2241 2242<p>More description of option parsing in code.html, which now describes the 2243FLAG_x macros, switching flag macro sets with FOR_newcommand, how 2244configuration zeroes flag macros and using FORCE_FLAGS to suppress the 2245zeroing of options shared between commands. Also added description of ";" 2246to make --longopts take an optional =value part, and more about TOYBOX_DEBUG 2247to check NEWTOY() option strings (otherwise a bad option string makes 2248lib/args.c obviously segfault, but doesn't explain why).</p> 2249 2250<p>Added a "Why 0BSD?" section to license.html when submitting zero clause bsd 2251to SPDX (according to the pending license spreadsheet, it's been approved for 2252SPDX 2.2).</p> 2253 2254<p>The old list of commands needing cleanup but not in pending was 2255removed from toys/pending/README and instead the issues were added 2256as TODO comments in the individual commands.</p> 2257 2258<p><b>Bugfixes:</b> 2259Fixed mount -a segfaulting without -O (reported by Janus Troelsen), 2260and made it try a "become rw" ioctl() on the block device before falling 2261back to mounting read only (because Android expects that). 2262Fixed printf -- and printf ---. Lots of tweaks to ls -l spacing with 2263different options. Make touch -d and -t actually set time when you don't 2264specify nanoseconds. 2265Fixed a subtle bug where recursive calls (toybox commands that run other 2266toybox commands) weren't resetting all their state. (This manifested as 2267a "no }" error from "find | xargs sed", but could cause other problems.) 2268And David Halls reported another sed bug trying to compile libiconv (which 2269left extra \ at the start of lines in a generated shell script, breaking 2270the build). Output an error message for "cat /mnt".</p> 2271 2272<p>Kylie McClain reported that mktemp broke when $TMPDIR was set to an empty 2273string (which is not the same as unset), that install/find didn't support 2274numeric uid/gids, and that sort -z affects both input and output. 2275Isabella Parakiss fixed a printf.c bug. 2276David Halls fixed bugs in install -D and find -exec. Samuel Holland 2277fixed unshare -r. Hyejin Kim fixed makedevs with a count of 1, fold -w 2278range checking, an error path in scripts/mkflags.c, added -i to dhcpd, 2279and stopped su from prompting the root user for the new user's password. 2280Jan Cybulski spotted wrong indentation when combining ls -s and -i with -C and 2281-x. José Bollo fixed stat %G. Sameer Pradhan fixed a bug in mkfifo -Z.</p> 2282 2283<p>Elliott Hughes asked for a default SIGPIPE handler to disable 2284the signal handler bionic's dynamic loader installs (yes really). Still not 2285100% sure what the correct behavior is there. (Posix is 2286(<a href=http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.comp.standards.posix.austin.general/10915>actively unhelpful</a>, but at least they're taking 2287<a href=http://austingroupbugs.net/view.php?id=789#c1976>years to 2288make up their mind</a>. Elliott also sent patches to fix a typo in 2289useradd.test, add missing arguments to error_exit() calls and clean up 2290printf() format strings, fix an off by one error in human_readable(), 2291fix dmesg -c error reporting, fix a segfault in comma_scan where the option 2292was the last item in optlist (triggered by mount -o ro,remount), fix 2293hwclock -w, made ifconfig print lowercase MAC addresses (it was bothering 2294him), and make terminal_size() read the right environment variable 2295(LINES, not ROWS). And he suggested the test suite notice high command exit 2296values (corresponding to segfault or other signals).</p> 2297 2298<p>People are apparently using toys/pending commands, despite the police tape 2299and flashing lights, so added louder warnings to toys/pending/README. 2300Elliott Hughes fixed various problems with tar, dd, more, and top. 2301Hyejin Kim cleaned up syslogd and dumpleases. Isaac Dunham added hotplug 2302support to mdev. Yeongdeok Suh added RFC-3315 ipv6 support to dhcpd.</p> 2303 2304<p>I rewrote ps.c from scratch (in pending), but it's not ready for real use 2305yet.</p> 2306 2307<p><b>Portability:</b> 2308On the portability front Bernhard Rosenkranzer fixed a problem where the 2309menuconfig code wouldn't compile in C99 mode. (This led to me documenting 2310the craptacular nature of kconfig in a README, and the plan to replace it 2311sometime before 1.0.) Some extra flags to shut up overzealous llvm warnings 2312were added (and have to be probed for because gcc complains about 2313arguments it doesn't recognize even when they switch stuff _off_ using 2314a standard syntax). Don't depend on malloc(0) to return non-null in ls. 2315David Halls fixed some mac/ios portability issues, 2316implying somebody's built at least part of toybox on a mac.</p> 2317 2318<p>Added basename_r() to lib/lib.c because the posix semantics for basename() 2319are stupid but what the gnu guys did to it was appalling. 2320Turns out bionic already had a basename_r(), but posix still doesn't. 2321Fixed it up in portability.h, but this 2322could break more stuff in future. (Correct fix is to lobby posix to add it, 2323which would probably take about 15 years...)</p> 2324 2325<p><b>Infrastructure:</b> 2326The build now checks $LDFLAGS for linker-only flags, and allows the strip 2327command to fail (binflt toolchains provide a strip that doesn't work). 2328Since time.c uses floating point, added TOYBOX_FLOAT dependency in config.</p> 2329 2330<p>There's a lib/lsm.h defining varous inline functions for linux 2331security modules stuff, if (lsm_enabled()) should turn into a compile-time 2332constant 0 and let code drop out when TOYBOX_LSM_NONE selected, but 2333testing against CFG_TOYBOX_LSM_NONE or derived symbols is still useful 2334becuase when it _is_ enabled the probe turns into a system call you 2335don't want to repeat too much.</p> 2336 2337<p>Switched a bunch of commands from signal() to xsignal(). Factored out 2338xgetgrnamid() and xgetpwnamid() into xwrap.c. Make time.c depend on 2339TOYBOX_FLOAT (since it always uses float so shouldn't be available on 2340build targets without even software float). Added readfileat() to lib/lib.c.</p> 2341 2342<p>The dirtree infrastructure now passes in full flags for the old symlink 2343field, and the new DIRTREE_SHUTUP flag disables warnings if a file vanishes 2344out from under you during traverse. New dirtree_start() wrapper to 2345create dirtree root with only two arguments.</p> 2346 2347<p>The not-curses infrastructure introduced by hexedit mostly moved to 2348lib/interestingtimes.c.</p> 2349 2350<a name="asterisk" /> 2351<a href="#asterisk_back" />Asterisk:</a> such when 2352Tim contacted me (my blog says a couple days before nov 13, 2011, I.E. 235311/11/11 not some specific day 2 months later) to ask if I wanted to work 2354on a new project he was proposing called 2355<a href=http://www.elinux.org/Busybox_replacement_project>BentoBox</a> 2356(because I used to do busybox, he'd forgotten toybox existed 2357until I brought it up). And don't ask me what "focuses not on compatibility 2358with its GNU counterparts" means when CP_MORE adds 7 non-posix options 2359and toys/other has 84 commands in neither posix nor LSB. I think they're 2360struggling to explain the difference having dismissed "licensing" as being 2361the reason it started up again after a long hiatus? The reason I don't think 2362GNU is special is there are a half-dozen other independent 2363implementations of the same unix command tools out there (AT&T, 2364BSD, Coherent, Minix, plan 9, busybox, toybox, and several more analyzed in 2365the <a href=roadmap.html>roadmap</a>, and that's ignoring the implementations 2366written for DOS or in assembly over the years). But I do care what 2367Linux From Scratch expects, and if it's 2368<a href=http://archive.linuxfromscratch.org/lfs-museum/7.6/LFS-BOOK-7.6-NOCHUNKS.html#ch-tools-gcc-pass1>calling mv -v</a> 2369then I impelement mv -v 2370even if <a href=http://landley.net/toybox/roadmap.html>posix hasn't got 2371it</a>. And I don't know why "gnu counterparts" would describe this when 2372util-linux isn't a gnu package, nor are info-zip, e2fsprogs, kmod, less, 2373procps, shadow, sysklogd, vim, zlib, sudo, dhcpcd...</p> 2374 2375<a name="05-04-2015" /><a href="#05-04-2015"><hr><h2><b>April 5, 2015</b></h2></a> 2376<p>Since <a href=https://android.googlesource.com/platform/external/toybox/>android</a> and 2377<a href=https://git.tizen.org/cgit/platform/upstream/toybox.git>tizen</a> 2378and <a href=https://github.com/kraj/meta-musl/tree/master/recipes-core/toybox>openembedded</a> 2379and <a href=https://packages.gentoo.org/package/sys-apps/toybox>gentoo</a> 2380and so on have all been using Georgi Chorbadzhiyski's git mirror rather 2381than the mercurial repository, I bit the bullet and switched the project's repo 2382<a href=https://github.com/landley/toybox>to git</a>. Georgi's 2383<a href=https://github.com/gfto/toybox>mirror</a> is now pulling from that.</p> 2384 2385<a name="25-02-2015" /><a href="#25-02-2015"><hr><h2><b>February 25, 2015</b></h2></a> 2386<blockquote><p>"A common mistake that people make when trying to design 2387something completely foolproof is to underestimate the ingenuity of 2388complete fools."</p><p>- The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.</p></blockquote> 2389 2390<p><a href=downloads/toybox-0.5.2.tar.gz>Toybox 0.5.2</a> 2391(<a href=/hg/toybox/shortlog/1702>commit 1702</a>) is out.</p> 2392 2393<p>New promoted commands: sed (finally fixed enough it builds Linux From 2394Scratch), printf (cleaned up and promoted), shred and 2395base64 (the Tizen guys wanted them), getenforce, setenforce, and chcon (android), 2396mix (promoted with fixes from Isaac Dunham), nsenter (from 2397Andy Lutomirski, merged into unshare).</p> 2398 2399<p>Elliott Hughes submited a bunch of patches to support Android (to 2400both toybox and Bionic libc, which he maintains). On toybox's end this 2401involved a lot of fixups to portability.[ch] and fixes to over a dozen 2402commands, plus several new ones. Other portability fixes included working 2403with buildroot's uclibc fork and building for nommu targets.</p> 2404 2405<p>The new "make change" target builds each toybox command as a standalone 2406binary. Rather a lot of commands that didn't build by themselves (mv depending 2407on cp and so on) were hit with a large rock until they built standalone. 2408This involved rewriting bits of option parsing, more elaborate dependency 2409generation, making each command have its own config 2410symbol and main() function (even when it's just a wrapper calling another 2411command's main()), and so on. Also, some commands can't be built standalone 2412at a conceptual level: "help" describes other enabled commands and "sh" 2413has a number of bulitin commands (cd, exit, set) that require the 2414multiplexer infrastructure, so "make change" filters them out.</p> 2415 2416<p>The mailing list's web archive is still screwed up. Dreamhost has 2417been trying to fix it since approximately September. There are 2418<a href=http://www.mail-archive.com/toybox@lists.landley.net/>two</a> 2419<a href=http://news.gmane.org/gmane.linux.toybox>other</a> less broken 2420archives, but neither has quite the same UI as mailman.</p> 2421 2422<h3>Bugfixes and tweaks</h3> 2423 2424<p>Cynt Rynt sent in tests for ifconfig, 2425Robert Thompson taught factor to accept whitespace separated arguments, 2426Hyejin Kim pointed out that some of mktemp's longopts were attached to 2427the wrong short options, 2428Luis Felipe Strano Moraes fixed a wrong free() call in bootchartd in pending. 2429Patches from Ashwini Sharma to make "df /dev/node" work, prevent du from 2430looping endlessly following symlinks, and to make expr.c 2431(in pending) understand == and regex matches. (Speaking of expr, it gets 2432priority groupings wrong but the bug was actually in the posix spec's 2433HTML conversion. They fixed the posix spec upstream for us. Still need 2434to fix the expr code, but it's in pending for a reason...)</p> 2435 2436<p>Some commands grew new option flags, such as cp --remove-destination 2437and touch -h.</p> 2438 2439<p>The parallel build has better error reporting now. When toybox needs to 2440re-exec itself to regain suid root permissions and hasn't got the suid bit, 2441it now gives the right error message ("not root" instead of "no such command"). 2442 2443<p>Added a test to "mount" to not mount the same device/directory combination 2444over itself (the OS catches this for block devices, but not for tmpfs). 2445Make blkid distinguish ext3 from ext4. Added catv back into cat (because 2446the Android guys wanted it, and they have historical usage on their side, 2447so...). Handle nanoseconds in touch.</p> 2448 2449<p>Fixed a segfault when CP_MORE was disabled (the resulting option flag list 2450no longer defined -d but still had it in option groups at the end). 2451Workaround for glibc redefining dirname() and basename() to random non-posix 2452semantics because gnu. (They could have created dirname_r() but didn't want 2453to.)</p> 2454 2455<p>Fix an ifconfig test that was preventing assigning an ipv4 address to 2456interface aliases. Several cleanup passes on hwclock but not quite 2457promoted out of pending yet.<p> 2458 2459<p>Fixed a wrong error message in rm (if you had a chmod 000 directory and 2460did rm -r on it without -f, after the prompt it would complain it was a 2461directory, which was not the problem).</p> 2462 2463<p>The gzip compression code now does "store only" output to stdout, for 2464what that's worth.</p> 2465 2466<p>Cleanup mountpoint and expand, and remove them from toys/pending/README 2467(a list of commands that predate the toys/pending directory but needed 2468another pass).</p> 2469 2470<h3>Library and infrastructure:</h3> 2471 2472<p>Reworked the option parsing infrastructure so more commands build 2473standalone (via scripts/single.sh or "make change"). The option flag bit 2474values are no longer packed, it leaves spaces where currently disabled 2475flags go, and you can #define FORCE_FLAGS so disabled flags aren't zeroed. 2476This allows multiple commands to more easily share infrastructure, even if 2477your current flag context is for a disabled command (switched off in config), 2478you can force them to stay on and as long as the flags read the same right 2479to left they'll have the same values.</p> 2480 2481<p>We've started removing use of strncpy() because it's a hugely broken 2482standard C function: the length is the maximum length to _append_, not 2483the size of the destination buffer. It memsets the remaining space it didn't 2484copy ala "memset(dest+strlen(dest), 0, len);" so 2485if you think len is the size of dest you're guaranteed to stomp memory off the 2486end). And if it runs out of space it won't null terminate because reasons. 2487(Meanwhile sprintf("%*s", len, str) is counting wide characters in your current 2488locale, so if you set a locale other than "C" it will also go past your 2489allocated buffer size. Whoever is maintining the C library standards is really 2490bad at strings.) 2491Instead we have xstrncat() which will error_exit() if src+dest+1 doesn't 2492fit in the buffer. (Because randomly truncating input data isn't necessarily 2493an improvement.) And there's always xmprintf().</p> 2494 2495<p>Similarly, strtol() doesn't return an error indicator on overflow, 2496you have to clear and then check errno. So new xstrtol() that cares 2497about overflow.</p> 2498 2499<p>The bionic and musl guys agree faccessat(AT_SYMLINK_NOFOLLOW) is not 2500supported, so stop using it.</p> 2501 2502<p>Fixed toy_exec() to detect when argc is in optargs, so we don't 2503need a separate xexec_optargs().</p> 2504 2505<a name="18-02-2015" /><a href="#18-02-2015"><hr><h2><b>February 18, 2015</b></h2></a> 2506<p>Dreamhost continues to be unable to make mailing list archives work, so 2507here's <a href=http://www.mail-archive.com/toybox@lists.landley.net/>another 2508list archive</a> with a less awkward interface than gmane.</p> 2509 2510<p>(Neither gives you the convenient historical monthly views of mailman, 2511but I still have hopes dreamhost will someday figure out what they're doing 2512wrong. They've only been trying since October. Last month they did a 2513<a href=http://www.dreamhoststatus.com/2015/01/14/discussion-list-hardware-maintenance/>hardware upgrade to fix a software problem</a>, and the stale 2514data loads much faster now, so that's something.)</p> 2515 2516<p>Update (Feb 19): the archive started updating again, by discarding 2517all the pending data. So there are now _two_ giant holes in Dreamhost's 2518web archive, from Dec 15-Jan 3, and then another hole from Jan 16-Feb 18. 2519The relevant messages are in both of the other archives. Here's hoping 2520the chronic archive constipation problem won't happen a sixth time.</p> 2521 2522<a name="30-12-2014" /><a href="#30-12-2014"><hr><h2><b>December 30, 2014</b></h2></a> 2523<p>Due to Dreamhost's <a href=http://landley.net/dreamhost.txt>ongoing</a> 2524<a href=http://landley.net/dreamhost2.txt>inability</a> to make mailman 2525work reliably, I've added a link to a backup web archive at 2526<a href=http://news.gmane.org/gmane.linux.toybox>gmane</a> to the nav bar 2527on the left.</p> 2528 2529<p>You still subscribe to the list through 2530<a href=http://lists.landley.net/listinfo.cgi/toybox-landley.net>the first link</a>.</p> 2531 2532<p>Update (January 27, 2015): they're <a href=https://twitter.com/landley/status/558428839462703104>still working on it</a>.</p> 2533 2534<a name="19-11-2014" /><a href="#19-11-2014"><hr><h2><b>November 19, 2014</b></h2></a> 2535 2536<blockquote><p>"This time it was right, it would work, and no one would have to get nailed to anything." - The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.</p></blockquote> 2537 2538<p><a href=downloads/toybox-0.5.1.tar.bz2>Toybox 0.5.1</a> 2539(<a href=/hg/toybox/shortlog/1566>commit 1566</a>) is out.</p> 2540 2541<p>It's an interim release, mostly bugfixes. There are several new commands, 2542but they're all in pending.</p> 2543 2544<h3>Development</h3> 2545 2546<p>Finally implemented sed, which is still in pending because although 2547it's feature complete according to posix, and even passes the parts of 2548Busybox's sed test suite that aren't explicitly testing for gnu bugs we 2549don't want to copy, it's not yet good enough to build Linux From Scratch. 2550(The ./configure stages use very long sed scripts. 20 commits worth of 2551implementation and debugging, just under 1000 lines of code, and there's 2552still more to do. We're definitely up to some of the "fiddly" commands now. 2553Did you know "echo hello | sed p - -" segfaults gnu sed in Ubuntu 12.04? 2554Yeah...)</p> 2555 2556<p>Talked with the Tizen developers to follow up on their desire to 2557make toybox a part of the base Tizen system, and got a list of commands 2558to add to the roadmap. The tizen todo list is:</p> 2559 2560<blockquote><p> 2561wget, sha256*, gzip, gunzip, bunzip2, rsync, zdiff*, 2562less, ar, arch, base64, csplit, dir, fmt, join, 2563nproc, shred, shuf, stdbuf, stty, test, tr, unexpand, 2564users, vdir, diff3, sdiff, dosfsck (fsck.vfat), awk, fdisk 2565</p></blockquote> 2566 2567<p>(Most of which was already on the todo list, but it helps prioritize.)</p> 2568 2569<p>Fixed md5sum and sha1sum on big endian systems (reported by James McMechan). 2570Andy Lutomirski fixed unshare's help text and option parsing, 2571and submitted nsenter (a tool to use setns(2)) to pending. 2572Isaac Dunham implemented acpi -ctV options, and spotted the bug that ls -d 2573was inappropraitely following command line symlinks without -H or -L (it 2574should act like ls -l does), and ls -F handles symlinks wrong too. 2575Lukasz Szpakowski sent in two bugfixes to tail.c. Cynt Rynt spotted an 2576unnecessary assignment in lib/password.c.</p> 2577 2578<p>Ashwini Sharma's team was as busy as usual, submitting tr, crontab, and 2579ipcrm, and hwclock to pending, more features to the pending ip.c, and a 2580pile of bugfixes (to chgrp, killall, ifconfig, insmod, 2581losetup, comm, cp, id, xwrap, netcat, modprobe, nohup...) mostly found by 2582static analysis. (These fixes are mostly to seldom-used codepaths like the 2583TOYBOX_FREE config option, but test coverage is always appreciated.) Ashwini 2584also suggested upgrading ln -f to leave the original target alone if link 2585creation fails, and reported that mv -f and -i weren't implemented (now fixed).</p> 2586 2587<p>New config option: TOYBOX_NORECURSE prevents xexec() from making internal 2588function calls (for nommu systems with a finite stack).</p> 2589 2590<p>The "toybox" multiplexer command no longer adds a trailing space to each 2591line of command names, so things like "./toybox | tr ' \n' '|'" to create 2592a grep pattern snippet are easier to do. (Why you'd want to is your business, 2593but the output is tidier now.)</p> 2594 2595<h3>Infrastructure</h3> 2596 2597<p>Isaac Dunham added Android support to portability.h, including compile 2598probes for functions missing from bionic-libc, and annotated the commands that 2599use those functions. We haven't really tested building against bionic, 2600but in theory it's possible now.</p> 2601 2602<p>Running the test suite now color codes the PASS/SKIP/FAIL notifications 2603if output is to a tty. (And in case you missed it last time, VERBOSE=fail 2604to stop at the first failure is really useful.)</p> 2605 2606<p>In loopfiles_rw() use O_CLOEXEC instead of O_RDONLY to request the loop 2607function close filehandles for us. (Otherwise the callback function must 2608close each supplied filehandle itself.)</p> 2609 2610<p>The printf-style escape parsing ("\n" and friends) got factored out into 2611a new unescape() function.</p> 2612 2613<a name="02-10-2014" /><a href="#02-10-2014"><hr><h2><b>October 2, 2014</b></h2></a> 2614<blockquote><p>"There is an art, it says, or rather, a knack to flying. 2615The knack lies in learning how to throw yourself at the ground and miss... 2616Clearly, it is this second part, the missing, which presents the 2617difficulties." - The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.<p></blockquote> 2618 2619<p><a href=downloads/toybox-0.5.0.tar.bz2>Toybox 0.5.0</a> 2620(<a href=/hg/toybox/shortlog/1512>commit 1512</a>) is out.</p> 2621 2622<h3>New commands</h3> 2623 2624<p>The new commands are find, install, factor, and mount. Promoted commands 2625(cleaned up and moved out of "pending") are lspci, inotifyd, and blockdev.</p> 2626 2627<p>cp now implements -HL and -F to force delete of pending files, cpio now 2628ignores -m and implements -p, ls -C now has utf8 support (using wcwidth 2629instead of strlen), and umount got a number of upgrades involving 2630looking things up in /proc/mounts. Other minor cleanups happend to 2631cut, touch, free, and id.</p> 2632 2633<p>In pending: Bradley Controy submitted mix (adjusts OSS sound volume). Ashwini 2634Sharma submitted diff, userdel, blockdev, ipcs, and crond, upgraded 2635fdisk, fsck, and ftpget, and ran a static analyzer on a lot of other code. 2636Partial cleanup was done to useradd, userdel, groupadd, and groupdel.</p> 2637 2638<h3>Build infrastructure</h3> 2639 2640<p><b>Parallel builds</b></p> 2641 2642<p>The build now takes advantage of SMP, autodetecting the number of 2643processors. (Export the environment variable CPUS to pick a specific number.) 2644Other build changes: split out $LDOPTIMIZE because old compilers complain 2645about linker options passed with -c, and the entire "generated" directory now 2646gets deleted by clean (the README that was in there got merged into code.html).</p> 2647 2648<p><b>Standalone builds</b></p> 2649 2650<p>The standalone build infrastructure (scripts/single.sh) got upgraded to 2651build more commands as standalone executables. In make.sh the source file 2652selection uses a regex to find the source files with the NEWTOY/OLDTOY macro 2653for the command. It enables each command's 2654sub-options (so CP has CP_MORE), enables I18N and FLOAT support to build 2655full-featured commands, and includes --help text (at least when 2656the command doesn't use another command's help). The OLDTOY() macro 2657now produces (redundant) function prototypes so you can build an OLDTOY 2658without the NEWTOY</p> 2659 2660<p>It doesn't quite have complete coverage yet, the defconfig entries that 2661aren't building standalone yet are:</p> 2662 2663<blockquote><p>chown, egrep, fgrep, fstype, halt, mv, nc, poweroff, unix2dos, 2664whoami</p></blockquote> 2665 2666<p>The main reason for standalone build failures is NEWTOY() or OLDTOY() 2667entries that don't have their own config symbol. Another problem is entries 2668that depend on another entry in kconfig, usually because common infrastructure 2669is using one command's flags (which the other commands copy): if that command 2670is disabled, the FLAG macros become 0 so dead code elimination can remove the 2671code. It's <a href=http://landley.net/hg/toybox/rev/1503>possible 2672to untangle</a> this, but a bit awkward. (It boils down to conflicting 2673design goals in the two contexts.)</p> 2674 2675<p>Standalone builds are used by the test suite when testing individual 2676commands. 2677 2678<p><b>Snapshot builds</b></p> 2679 2680<p>A new addition to the "generated" directory is generated/build.sh 2681containing a single compiler command line to build toybox in its current 2682configuration. Combined with the generated/*.{h,sh} files from an 2683exisiting build, this may let you build on a new system that hasn't quite 2684got enough OS bits working to run a full configureand make.</p> 2685 2686<h3>Internals</h3> 2687 2688<p>Library code: xcreate/xopen now O_CLOEXEC by default to avoid leaking 2689filehandles to child processes. DIRTREE_COMEAGAIN's second callback is now 2690done with the directory filehandle still open (new dir->again variable added 2691to distinguish first from second callback, and requesting DIRTREE_RECURSE now 2692requires passing in the specific macro value, not just a true/false). 2693Use daemon() out of libc instead of hand-rolled daemonize() in various 2694pending commands. string_to_mode() now passes through type bits so you can 2695use it to more easily modify a file's existing mode. 2696Split xpopen() into xpopen_both(), xopen(), and xrun() depending on whether 2697we want to redirect both, one, or neither of stdin/stdout.</p> 2698 2699<p>Bugfixes: Better error message when TOYBOX_SUID option can't drop priviliges 2700(which happens when you suid something _other_ than root). 2701The old pending version of nbd_client.c wasn't deleted when the 2702command was promoted (and the build would break if both were enabled), 2703toy_exec() sometimes needs to re-exec from $PATH rather than recurse 2704internally (to gain dropped root permissions or limit stack depth), 2705always call setlocale() when I18N is enabled to switch it back _off_ when 2706we run commands that expect sscanf("%n") to return bytes, 2707dirtree() had a memory leak in an error path, patch.c had some bugs in 2708error paths (didn't report problem clearly). Ashwini Sharma spotted an 2709option parsing bug where [-abc] would forget _all_ command line arguments 2710saved in the GLOBALS() block (not just the ones for options being switched 2711off), plus various minor fixes to nbd_client and cpio. 2712Lukasz Szpakowski fixed rm -f on a broken symlink (failed), and killall 2713with no arguments (segfaulted).</p> 2714 2715<p><b>Portability</b></p> 2716 2717<p>A somewhat fiddly fix to rm -rf (which needs to chmod directories to u+rwx 2718to descend into them) which hit a musl bug in faccessat() which the musl 2719maintainer refuses to fix. (He literally wants the man page changed 2720instead, despite other libcs working.) Added an #ifdef __MUSL__ section 2721to portability.h with a workaround, you may need CFLAGS=-D__MUSL__ in your 2722build if your musl build's features.h doesn't #define that. (I may do 2723a different workaround in future, but sometimes you've just got to make 2724it work so you can ship. Also, toybox grep with multiple patterns 2725requires <a href=http://landley.net/hg/aboriginal/rev/1692>a patch 2726to musl's regex engine</a>, which applies to 1.1.4 but not to the current 2727musl source control.)</p> 2728 2729<p>More portability.h fixes for uClibc too. (I don't expect that to ever have 2730another release, so locally patching around posix-2008 violations is silly).</p> 2731 2732<p><b>Change to username filtering</b></p> 2733 2734<p>Posix recommends the username creation logic filter usernames to a small 2735allowed set of characters (which even Red Hat breaks by explicitly allowing 2736"$" at the end), but this prevents UTF-8 usernames. Posix' stated logic 2737is to allow filesystems to create the user's home directory, but Linux 2738filesystems can accept any character but NUL and "/". The only characters 2739we actually _need_ to filter out are ":" (field separator in passwd), 2740newline (line separator in passwd), and "/" (directory separator in 2741filesystem).</p> 2742 2743<h3>Documentation</h3> 2744 2745<p>Web pages updated: cleanup.html documents more cleanup, code.html 2746documents more code, and about.html now capitalizes "toybox" consistently 2747(it's just a word, capitalize at start of sentence).</p> 2748 2749<p>The pending/README file now lists commands that needed review/cleanup 2750before the pending directory was added.</p> 2751 2752<h3>Test Suite</h3> 2753 2754<p>Moved out of scripts/test into top level "tests" directory, and the 2755testing.sh script is now in scripts rather than mixed into the *.test files.</p> 2756 2757<p>Johan Bergström requested VERBOSE=fail to make tests (telling it to 2758stop at the first failure), and spotted a build bug where using gnu 2759sort on the host broke in non-C locales.</p> 2760 2761<p>Divya Kothari submitted tests for chmod, link, tar, bzcat, xzcat, zcat, 2762and hostname. (And more, but that's all that's merged so far.)</p> 2763 2764<a name="07-07-2014" /><a href="#07-07-2014"><hr><h2><b>July 7, 2014</b></h2></a> 2765<blockquote><p>"This planet has - or rather had - a problem, which was this: 2766most of the people living on it were unhappy for pretty much of the time. Many 2767solutions were suggested for this problem, but most of these were largely 2768concerned with the movement of small green pieces of paper, which was odd 2769because on the whole it wasn't the small green pieces of paper that were 2770unhappy." - The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.</p></blockquote> 2771 2772<p><a href=downloads/toybox-0.4.9.tar.bz2>Toybox 0.4.9</a> (<a href=/hg/toybox/shortlog/1385>commit 1385</a>) is out.</p> 2773 2774<p><b>New commands</b> added to pending include: 2775lsattr, chattr, inotifyd, rfkill, sulogin, strings, makedevs, 2776killall5, and tar from Ashwini Sharma, arp from Kyungwan Han, 2777sysctl by Bilal Qureshi, partprobe from Bertold Van den Bergh, 2778host from Rich felker, and I did nbd-client and the first 2/3 of mount.</p> 2779 2780<p>Finished cleanups (commands promoted out of pending): 2781sysctl, rfkill, strings, mkpasswd, makedevs, partprobe, killall5, 2782fallocate, and nbd-client.</p> 2783 2784<p>(Along the way partial cleanups got made to: last, fold, lspci, ps, 2785bootchartd, init, fsck, telnetd, telnet, vconfig, toysh, iconv, useradd, 2786login, host, openvt, deallocvt, getty, tftpd, and modprobe. But there's 2787still more to do on all of those.)</p> 2788 2789<p>This time around the <a href=bin>static binaries</a> are linked against 2790musl instead of uClibc. (That's why there's no sparc version, musl doesn't 2791support that target yet.)</p> 2792 2793<p><b>Documentation:</b></p> 2794 2795<p>The help text parser expects lower case "usage:" lines with 2796a blank line after them, so go through and regularize those. Expand the 2797"coding style" section in the docs and move it to design.html. (Not a show 2798stopper for incoming 2799contributions, just an explanation of some of the things I'll do to them 2800during cleanup.) The help text for the "toybox" command now includes 2801the shell script snippet to install symlinks to the toybox binary.</p> 2802 2803<p>The <a href=cleanup.html>cleanup page</a> now has descriptions for the 2804full ifconfig cleanup series, among others.</p> 2805 2806<p>The new toys/examples directory contains hello.c and skeleton.c. The first is 2807a simple hello world program in toybox style, the second is a much more 2808elaborate example program using showing how to use the command line option 2809parsing and how to provide multiple commands in the same C file.</p> 2810 2811<p><b>Fixes</b>:</p> 2812 2813<p>Fix od bug reported by Samuel Holland ("od -v -b" was appending the default 2814output type even though an output type was specified). Ashwini Sharma reported 2815bugs where readfile() was incorrectly freeing its buffer, and where toy_init() 2816was zeroing the wrong data because the field it was using to measure (rebound) 2817had moved (when I moved it back I added a comment why the field needs to be 2818there), fixed a segfault in the dhcp client, and made a 0 length read at 2819the start of password entry count as EOF. Make the "we are not root" test 2820in the init code show the help text. Posix implies that fflush() can return 2821success even when the stream's error bit is set, so call both fflush() and 2822ferror() from xprintf().</p> 2823 2824<p>Isaac Dunham pointed out that bloatcheck couldn't deal with diff 2825implementations that only implement "unified diff" format, and that some 2826diff implementations can't handle nonseekable input (I.E. reading from 2827a pipe). Bugfix so "help -a" works again. Option parsing on nohup now stops 2828at first nonoption argument. Fix segfault in "which" if PATH wasn't set, 2829which was actually a bug in lib function find_in_path(). Made rm -rf of 2830chmod 000 directories actually remove them.</p> 2831 2832<p>The build now passes the same $CFLAGS to the library probe as the final 2833build, because arch linux is so broken it provides different sets of 2834libraries for static and dynamic linking.</p> 2835 2836<p>It turns out sprintf("%.123s", str) is counting characters, not bytes, 2837so globally enabling locale support opens stack smashing vulnerabilities. 2838So there's a new TOYFLAGS_LOCALE you set in toyflags when you want the 2839setup code to setlocale().</p> 2840 2841<p><b>Upgrades:</b></p> 2842 2843<p>Isaac Dunham extended cpio to archive unreadable empty files, and I taught it 2844to set uid/gid and timestamp when extracting archives. Isaac also 2845added tests for cpio, link, and du, added lspci -i, made the pci database 2846parsing skip # comment lines, merged logname and whoami into id.</p> 2847 2848<p>Daniel Verkamp sped up md5sum about 30% with some loop unrolling, making 2849it actually smaller in the process. I added -b flags to md5sum and sha1sum 2850for "brief" output that's just the hash with no filename. (I'm aware other 2851implementations use that for MSDOS "binary" mode, and don't care.)</p> 2852 2853<p>When building standalone commands (scripts/singleconfig.sh commandname), 2854the build now switches on all the sub-options of the command so we get 2855a standalone version with all the bells and whistles enabled.</p> 2856 2857<p>Add -ds flags to date and document +FORMAT escapes. Add the shell NOP 2858command ":" as an alias for true (for toysh).</p> 2859 2860<p>Add uClibc probe for iconv() and fallocate. (The fact it didn't always 2861build against uClibc is why fallocate wasn't enabled in defconfig before.)</p> 2862 2863<p>The umount command now does an losetup -d on the device by default, so 2864we don't leak loopback devices. Bugfix to losetup so "losetup /dev/loop0 2865filename" actually works again.</p> 2866 2867<p>Divya Kothari sent in test suite entries for ls, ln, rm, mv, printf, dd, 2868and renice. Then a second round for lsattr/chattr, mount, chmod, pgrep/pkill, 2869groupadd, groupdel, and useradd. Several of these uncovered bugs, still 2870working to fix them.</p> 2871 2872<p>There are now free() functions for the predefined llist types and a 2873dlist_terminate() function to break doubly linked lists. The new 2874generic_signal() handler either sets "toys.signal" or writes a byte 2875to toys.signalfd with the signal number if signalfd isn't -1 (which it's 2876initialized to in toy_init).</p> 2877 2878<p>The option parsing logic can now detect when a double fits in a long and 2879use the more precise type for floating point arguments (the FLOAT macro 2880contains the type used). The human_readable() function now just outputs 2881decimal kilo/mega/gigabytes (so when du -u says 5.0G it means 5.0 billion 2882bytes). The build infrastructure now notices duplicate commands (so if you 2883cp toys/pending/command.c toys/other/command.c and forget to delete the 2884first one, the build break is now more informative).</p> 2885 2886<a name="20-04-2014" /><a href="#20-04-2014"><hr><h2><b>April 20, 2014</b></h2></a> 2887<blockquote><p>And to this end they built themselves a stupendous supercomputer 2888which was so amazingly intelligent that even before the data banks 2889had been connected up it had started from "I think therefore I am" and got as 2890far as the existence of rice pudding and income tax before anyone managed to 2891turn it off. - The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.</p></blockquote> 2892 2893<p><a href=downloads/toybox-0.4.8.tar.bz2>Toybox 0.4.8</a> is based on 2894<a href=http://landley.net/hg/toybox/shortlog/1262>commit 1262</a>. And 2895about time too.</p> 2896 2897<p>The big news is that the build no longer needs python to generate help.h, 2898that's now done in C. The help text generation is also collating help text 2899from multiple options, merging command line option blocks and usage: lines. 2900There's even a new <a href=help.html>help web page</a>.</p> 2901 2902<p><b>New commands:</b> Ifconfig, cpio, and su were cleaned up the rest of the 2903way and promoted out of pending. That saga is mostly explained on the 2904<a href=cleanup.html>cleanup page</a>. Vivek Bhagat's freeramdisk, 2905Isaac Dunham's fsfreeze, and Felix Janda's iconv are also new.</p> 2906 2907<p><b>In pending:</b> 2908Ashwini Sharma's team submitted tcpsvd, udpsvd, telnet, telnetd, last, more, 2909groupdel/delgroup, arping, brctl, ftpget, ftpput, printf, reset, and added 2910ipv6 support to traceroute. Kyungwan Han's team submitted modprobe and getty. 2911Vivek Bhagat submitted openvt and deacllocvt. Samuel Holland submitted fold. 2912I wrote a new inflate (zip/zlib/gzip decompression) implementation in 2913compress.c, and still need to do a corresponding deflate (compression-side) 2914and plug them into gzip and zip and so on. (Right now it does zcat.)</p> 2915 2916<p>Several commands (vmstat, login, du, vconfig, mountpoint, free, chroot, 2917cut, touch, modinfo, expand) predate the "pending" directory, and are thus 2918in other directories but still need cleanup. Of these, vmstat got some 2919work this time (which would be much easier other vmstat implementations 2920documented what their output actually meant).</p> 2921 2922<p><b>Upgrades:</b> Ifconfig grew /prefix netmask support (ala 1.2.3.4/24). Grep now has -zZ to 2923handle null terminated data, cksum grew -H for hex output. Upgraded od so the 2924fields align better when producing multiple output types. Help has -a and -h 2925options (all commands, html output). 2926Bugfix to blkid building for a 32 bit target. The date command can actually 2927set dates now. The O_NOFOLLOW compile time probe didn't work with cross 2928compiling, so it's back to an #ifdef test in portability.h. Nathan McSween 2929sent in a bugfix to od and a portability fix in the common library code. 2930Ashwini Sharma spotted a bug in pidof -o, and added verbose (-v) options 2931to mkdir and ln, and suggested killall should have an -s option and 2932allow -l to take zero arguments. Ashwini Sharma and Felix Janda upgraded 2933tftpd. Fixed dumpleases still using toynet.h after 2934that was removed. Corrected killall return code and error reporting. 2935Isacc Dunham fixed bugs all over the tree, did cleanup on a bunch of 2936pending commands (getty, ftpget, init, openvt, modprobe...), and clarified 2937find's help text. Tom Sparrow ran three different static analyzers on 2938the code, which resulted in a few cleanups. The peek()/poke() functions 2939now use "volatile" to prevent broken compiler "optimizations" to do with 2940aliasing.</p> 2941 2942<p><b>Build stuff:</b> Each FOR_xxxx macro now has a complementary CLEANUP_xxxx macro, so you 2943can put multiple commands with different command line options in the same 2944.c file, so they can share infrastructure outside of lib. (This let the 2945bunzip logic move out of lib into bzcat.c.) See XXX for example. 2946i 2947<p>The headers #included in toys.h are now grouped by standard, and headers 2948not listed in Posix or LSB were moved to portability.h. The old xregcomp.h 2949was folded into lib.h because it's posix (and supporting oddball uClibc 2950configurations isn't as important as it once was).</p> 2951 2952<p>Regression tested against Ubuntu 8.04 to fix up bit-rot in defconfig 2953build on older systems. (We depend on Posix-2008, but not necessarily 2954the absolute latest build environment.)</p> 2955 2956<p><b>In lib</b>: lib/xwrap.c added xgetpwnam(), xchroot(), and lib/lib.c now has names_to_pid(). 2957xsetuid() was replaced with xsetuser() which takes a struct passwd 2958and sets both gid and uid, mkpathat() got factored out into a library command, 2959get_int_value() became atolx_range(), and 2960xmsprintf() is now just xmprintf(). The bunzip2 logic moved from lib into 2961bzcat.c.</p> 2962 2963<p><b>Documentation</b>: new <a href=help.html>help page</a> with the 2964help text for all the defconfig commands, using the new help -ah output. 2965The <a href=code.html>source code walkthrough</a> now says more about 2966#including header files, and how the generated/* directory works. The 2967<a href=design.html>design page</a> has some new paragraphs about trading 2968of different kinds of simplicity, and why comments aren't a substitute for 2969good code. The README no longer trails off into obvious unfinished confusion 2970at the end. Each page on the website should now have its own title.</p> 2971 2972<a name="18-11-2013" /><a href="#18-11-2013"><hr><h2><b>November 18, 2013</b></h2></a> 2973<blockquote><p>"Space," it says, "is big. Really big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mindbogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the street to the chemist's, but that's just peanuts to space." - 2974The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.</p></blockquote> 2975 2976<p><a href=downloads/toybox-0.4.7.tar.bz2>Toybox 0.4.7</a> is based on 2977<a href=http://landley.net/hg/toybox/shortlog/1122>commit 1122</a>.</p> 2978 2979<p>New commands: Brad Conroy submitted blkid. Elie De Brauwer submitted 2980reboot, halt, and poweroff. Strake's nl got cleaned up and promoted from 2981pending to posix. In addition, the existing chvt and vconfig got some 2982cleanup.</p> 2983 2984<p>That said, I haven't nearly kept up with the flood of new commands going 2985into pending: Ashwini Sharma's team submitted 2986dd, dumpleases, traceroute, top, useradd, groupadd, mkpasswd, tftpd, and 2987an fsck wrapper (with no filesystem drivers yet). Isaac Dunham sent in cpio.</p> 2988 2989<p>Bugfixes: Jeroen van Rijn added a user count to uptime. Elie De Brauwer 2990added -e to watch, removed a memory leak, and fixed a terminal size problem. 2991William Haddon made xargs call its command line once even with blank input 2992(the standard is vague, but builds expect it), and fixed an off by one bug 2993where grep didn't malloc enough space with -E (leading to a segfault). 2994I fixed a glitch in bunzip2 (same one as went into busybox since they're using 2995the code I wrote), in od to fix -t co, -J, and -c options. Add uname -o as a 2996synonym for -s. Build fix to never use $CC without prefixing it with 2997$CROSS_COMPILE (since $HOSTCC could be different). Anca Emanuel spotted 2998a typo in the web page.</p> 2999 3000<p>The compile-time command line option parsing got rewritten (ported from 3001bash to C), which should speed up builds a bit and allow code controlled by 3002--longopts to drop out properly when disabled in the configuration. Terminal 3003querying got refactored. Patch's -x option is now more informative (a 3004debug thing if you're trying to figure out why a patch didn't apply). 3005The "toynet.h" file got folded into toys.h since musl supports it and 3006micromanging uClibc options isn't very interesting anymore. The test suite 3007now uses scripts/single.sh when testing a single command.</p> 3008 3009<a name="17-09-2013" /><a href="#17-09-2013"><hr><h2><b>September 17, 2013</b></h2></a> 3010<blockquote><p>"Think of a number," said the computer, "any number." 3011Arthur told the computer the telephone number of King's Cross railway 3012station passenger inquiries, on the grounds that it must have some function, 3013and this might turn out to be it. - The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy</p> 3014</blockquote> 3015 3016<p><a href=downloads/toybox-0.4.6.tar.bz2>Toybox 0.4.6</a> is based on 3017<a href=http://landley.net/hg/toybox/shortlog/1068>commit 1068</a>.</p> 3018 3019<p>This release adds 3020several new commands: Felix Janda wrote paste and fallocate, Kyungwan Han 3021submitted eject, Strake contributed grep, Ashwini Sharma added pmap (and 3022a testsuite entry for grep), Lukasz Skalski sent pwdx, Isaac Dunham posted 3023acpi, and I did timeout and umount.</p> 3024 3025<p>The ls command now has a --color=auto option (suggested by Rich Felker). 3026The multiplexer now has a --help option so you can say "./toybox --help blah" 3027instead of using the built-in "help" command. (Which is a shell built-in. 3028Try it on your command line, it's like man for shell builtins. But a certain 3029other project has conditioned people to expect --help, so...) I forget who 3030heehooman at gmail is but they pointed out unshare needed PID and UID 3031namespace support.</p> 3032 3033<h3>Pending</h3> 3034 3035<p>A lot of new commands in toys/pending, to the point the next release should 3036probably just focus on cleanup and review of this backlog. We've got klogd, 3037dhcp, dhcpd, watch, route, and ps from 3038Ashwini Sharma (and an fsck wrapper but no fsck.fstype engines yet), 3039syslogd, pgrep, and pkill from Madhur Verma, netstat by Ranjan Kumar, 3040test by Felix Janda, lspci by Isaac Dunham, nl, su, and renice by strake (I.E. 3041M. Farkas-Dyck), and sysvinit by Kyungwan Han.</p> 3042 3043<p>Some cleanup work on existing pending commands that aren't 3044ready to promote yet: I did a few more rounds on ifconfig 3045and Isaac Dunham's did several cleanups to xzcat, Felix Janda cleaned up 3046logger and syslogd...</p> 3047 3048<p>Also some cleanup work on commands that predate the pending directory, 3049but weren't quite polished when they went in, most prominently du, 3050expand, and touch.</p> 3051 3052<h3>Infrastructure</h3> 3053 3054<p>The new scripts/single.sh builds a standalone command without the 3055multiplexer, although not all commands can be built that way yet (NEWTOY yes, 3056OLDTOY no) and the space savings aren't anything to write home about. (If a 3057command needs the option parsing logic at all, it needs all of it.) If 3058you're curious, you can do:</p> 3059 3060<blockquote><pre> 3061make defconfig 3062make 3063mkdir singles 3064for i in $(./toybox) 3065do 3066 echo $i 3067 PREFIX=singles/ scripts/single.sh $i || break 3068done 3069</pre> 3070<p>(And then wait a long time and watch almost half the builds fail.)</p> 3071</blockquote> 3072 3073<p>There is now libbuf analogous to toybuf, another global 4k buffer this 3074time for use by lib/ code instead of command code.</p> 3075 3076<p>The lib directory got split up a bit, lib/pending.c contains functions 3077not yet used by anything outside of toys/pending/*, and lib/xwrap.c contains 3078functions that wrap other functions and handle failures (via error_exit). 3079This leaves lib/lib.c containing actual new functions.</p> 3080 3081<p>General improvements and bug fixes to argument parsing. The [-abc] exclude 3082logic should now clear arguments slots when disabling options. Bare --longopts 3083should work now and be able to report errors using their name, the new ; 3084option allows optional arguments to longopts only suppliable with = (I.E. 3085--color and --color=auto but not --color auto).</p> 3086 3087<p>I'm gradually weaning the code off of itoa()/utoa() because sprintf 3088does this already. In this case "simple" probably means "let libc do it 3089for us".</p> 3090 3091<p>Rewrote for_each_pid_with_name_in() and renamed it to just names_to_pid(). 3092It shouldn't get confused trying to compare absolute and relative paths quite 3093so much anymore.</p> 3094 3095<p>lib/llist.c grew a new dlist_pop() function for removing a doubly 3096linked list entry while maintaining a circular list; tail and patch are 3097using it now.</p> 3098 3099<p>The musl guys suggested a new optimization flag 3100(-fno-asynchronous-unwind-tables) 3101that shaves about 10% off the binary size by removing a C++ism that crept 3102into gcc's idea of C. While I don't normally try to micromanage the compiler, 3103"-fstop-being-stupid" is a thing you have to hit gcc with from time to time.</p> 3104 3105<h3>Bugfixes</h3> 3106 3107<p>Felix Janda and I did a largeish rewrite of tail to 3108finally make it work right (we think). Still need to implement tail -f 3109someday (the tricky bit is making -f follow multiple files at once). 3110Felix also reported a bug in xpidfile.</p> 3111 3112<p>Juhani Haverinen pointed out that 3113python 3 doesn't work with config2help.py, so the detection logic looks 3114for python2 (until I get around to rewriting that in C). Elie De Brauwer 3115then fixed our first attempt at this, and also fixed uname's help string.</p> 3116 3117<p>Ashwini Sharma 3118pointed out the build was making a FLAG_ macro for " " which broke some 3119configurations. (That's a control character, not a command line option.)</p> 3120 3121<p>Jacek Bukarewicz pointed out a bug in chdir permission handling, and 3122a way to make env segfault. Both should be fixed now.</p> 3123 3124<p>The new function xexec_optargs() 3125replaces calls to xexec(toys.optargs) to avoid freeing and reusing optargs 3126during option parsing screwing stuff up (such as netcat's exec mode).</p> 3127 3128<p>The stat command's %a output was padded with leading zeroes, which 3129didn't match anybody else's behavior and thus made the test suite hiccup 3130between TEST_HOST and testing toybox. (If you go "TEST_HOST=1 scripts/test.sh 3131command" it sanity checks the tests against the host implementation.)</p> 3132 3133<p>Last release, "mkdir sub/sub && chmod 007 sub/sub && rm -rf sub" didn't 3134delete sub and didn't exit with an error either. Neither was correct, rm 3135should now be fixed.</p> 3136 3137<p> 3138<a name="26-07-2013" /><a href="#26-07-2013"><hr><h2><b>July 26, 2013</b></h2></a> 3139<p>Georgi Chorbadzhiyski maintains a <a href=https://github.com/gfto/toybox>git 3140mirror</a> of the repository on github, automatically updated from the 3141mercurial every 6 hours. The mirror is read only, but you can generate patches 3142against it and post them to the list.</p> 3143 3144<a name="02-07-2013" /><a href="#02-07-2013"><hr><h2><b>July 2, 2013</b></h2></a> 3145<blockquote><p>"Time is an illusion. Lunchtime doubly so." "Very deep. You 3146should send that in to the Reader's Digest. They've got a page for people 3147like you." - 3148The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.</p></blockquote> 3149 3150<p><a href=downloads/toybox-0.4.5.tar.bz2>Toybox 0.4.5</a> is based on 3151<a href=http://landley.net/hg/toybox/shortlog/941>commit 941</a>. It adds 3152uuencode and uudecode from Erich Plondke, and enables Luis Morales' "who" by 3153default. Felix Janda and I cleaned up last year's "stat" submission and 3154enabled it. Ivo van Poorten added "groups". 3155Andre Renaud added "lsusb". I implemented "split", "pivot_root", and "mv". 3156</p> 3157 3158<p>The "help" command is implemented differently now (lib/help.c) and 3159each command can now understand --help (including both "toybox --help" 3160and "toybox --help command" in the multiplexer).</p> 3161 3162<p>The "pending" directory has several commands (find, xzcat, nbd-client, 3163logger, expr) which work but are not enabled by default pending further cleanup. 3164Ifconfig is enabled, but still in pending because it's only 2/3 cleaned up. 3165(It's an awkward halfway state but I'm not holding up the release for it.)</p> 3166 3167<p>I'm <a href=cleanup.html>documenting the cleanups</a> to teach 3168more people to do it, but the writeups aren't caught up yet. The 3169<a href=roadmap.html>roadmap</a> also got updated a bit with further analysis 3170of other projects, and the README and about pages got updated.</p> 3171 3172<p>Fixed _another_ "ls -C" segfault when terminal size can't be detected, 3173condensed the ls help text to fit on one page, implented --color, and taught 3174-l to print the major, minor numbers when showing block/char devices. 3175Argument parsing now handles "--" properly (to end option checking), 3176and the infrastructure can now handle bare --longopts that have no 3177corresponding short option (both were implemented before but didn't work). 3178Fixed an old bug in "patch", chmod grew -f, who grew -a. Isaac Dunham 3179fixed "-" vs "_" handling in modinfo, added a "firmware" output 3180field, added -b and -k support, and taught it that the ".ko" extension means 3181to look for the file at the specified path instead of under /lib. Felix Janda 3182moved file permission display code to lib so ls and 3183stat could share it. Ashwini Sharma spotted a bug in xabspath when the 3184last path component exists but we haven't got permissions to open it 3185(ala readlink -f /dev/sda as a normal user). 3186</p> 3187 3188<p>In the build infrastructure, scripts/findglobals.sh finds leaked global 3189variables. (Leaked means they aren't part of the global union: Other than glibc 3190debris, toybox should define "this", "toy_list", "toybuf", and "toys", and 3191that's it; the rest add memory footprint to every command for the benefit of 3192just one command; use GLOBALS() to stick 'em in the union.) Static linking 3193against libraries other than the host's libc now applies to feature probes 3194for unshare and such. Neuter stupid internationalization support that makes 3195various host "sort" commands put things in an order other than alphabetical 3196(breaking the multiplexer's binary search on command names). 3197 3198<p>You should now be able to build from a source control snapshot on a build 3199system that hasn't got python: if you disable CONFIG_TOYBOX_HELP. (The 3200release tarballs ship generated/help.h, but it's not in source control. 3201Eventually I should rewrite that python script in C.)</p> 3202</p> 3203 3204<p><b>LICENSE TWEAK</b>: After <a href=http://lists.landley.net/pipermail/toybox-landley.net/2013-March/000794.html>discussion</a> on the mailing list the "2 clause 3205BSD" <a href=license.html>license</a> got slightly simplified so the first 3206paragraph now says:</p> 3207 3208<blockquote><p>Permission to use, copy, modify, and/or distribute this 3209software for any purpose with or without fee is hereby granted.</p></blockquote> 3210 3211<p>It used to continue "provided that the above copyright notice and this 3212permission notice appear in all copies", but A) what's the point? B) does "all 3213copies" mean binaries, or just source code, or what? C) lots of projects 3214that consider BSD and GPL compatible have <a href=https://git.kernel.org/cgit/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/tree/crypto/aes_generic.c>files with 3215both license notices</a> on them (sometimes at <a href=http://git.busybox.net/busybox/tree/shell/ash.c>opposite ends of the file</a> to make the conflict 3216less obvious) because "all copies must include this function" would violate 3217the GPL but "all copies must include this magic text blob" somehow don't?</p> 3218 3219<p>I don't want to have to care about this anymore. The tweaked version is more 3220or less public domain with a liability disclaimer, but we're still calling it 3221BSD (sometimes "0 clause BSD") to avoid explaining.</p> 3222 3223<a name="21-03-2013" /><a href="#21-03-2013"><hr><h2><b>March 21, 2013</b></h2></a> 3224<p>Video of my ELC talk 3225"<a href=http://youtu.be/SGmtP5Lg_t0>Why is Toybox?</a>" 3226is up on youtube. Related materials include the 3227<a href=http://landley.net/talks/celf-2013.txt>talk outline</a> and an 3228<a href=/aboriginal/about.html#selfhost>android self-hosting writeup</a>.</p> 3229 3230<p>[Updated June 4] The following links jump to specific topics in the video. (Sorry about 3231the ads, it's The Linux Foundation.)</p> 3232 3233<ul> 3234<li>0m29s <a href=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SGmtP5Lg_t0#t=0m29s>The smartphone is replacing the PC</a></li> 3235 <ul> 3236 <li>4m22s <a href=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SGmtP5Lg_t0#t=4m22s>Software needed to become self-hosting</a></li> 3237 <li>6m20s <a href=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SGmtP5Lg_t0#t=6m20s>Do we care if android or iphone wins?</a></li> 3238 </ul> 3239<li>9m45s <a href=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SGmtP5Lg_t0#t=9m45s>Android not vanilla: oppose or accept?</a></li> 3240 <ul> 3241 <li>11m30s <a href=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SGmtP5Lg_t0#t=11m30s>Open source can't do User Interfaces</a></li> 3242 </ul> 3243<li>15m09s <a href=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SGmtP5Lg_t0#t=15m09s>Android is not copyleft: oppose or accept?</a></li> 3244<li>18m23s <a href=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SGmtP5Lg_t0#t=18m23s>Security issues</a></li> 3245<li>21m15s <a href=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SGmtP5Lg_t0#t=21m15s>Solutions to the software problems</a></li> 3246 <ul> 3247 <li>22m55s <a href=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SGmtP5Lg_t0#t=22m55s>What toybox needs to be/do</a></li> 3248 <li>28m17s <a href=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SGmtP5Lg_t0#t=28m17s>What is toybox?</a></li> 3249 <ul> 3250 <li>28m58s <a href=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SGmtP5Lg_t0#t=28m58s>Why toybox started...</a></li> 3251 <li>37m50s <a href=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SGmtP5Lg_t0#t=37m50s>What does toybox actually implement?</a></li> 3252 </ul> 3253 </ul> 3254</ul> 3255</span> 3256 3257 3258<a name="14-03-2013" /><a href="#14-03-2013"><hr><h2><b>March 14, 2013</b></h2></a> 3259<blockquote><p>"Ford, you're turning into a penguin. Stop it." - 3260The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.</p></blockquote> 3261 3262<p><a href=downloads/toybox-0.4.4.tar.bz2>Toybox 0.4.4</a> is based on 3263<a href=http://landley.net/hg/toybox/shortlog/813>commit 813</a>, adding 3264the "time" and "readahead" commands, plus some bugfixes.</p> 3265 3266<p>The "cp" command now implements the -s symlink option, plus bugfixes 3267getting various corner cases right as used in actual package builds. 3268"id -Gn root" should now print root's groups 3269instead of the current user's. Several build fixes so toybox builds under 3270Ubuntu 8.04 again (which is about as old a build environment as you 3271can expect to find posix-2008 features in).</p> 3272 3273<p>Unfinished commands have generally been moved to "toys/pending". 3274Everything else should "default y" to participate in make defconfig. 3275Several of those pending commands got some basic cleanup so allyesconfig 3276should at least compile (although defconfig is still what's useful).</p> 3277 3278<p>Significant roadmap updates, checking several other multicall binaries 3279(klibc, sash, sbase, s6...) to see what commands they include.</p> 3280 3281<a name="18-01-2013" /><a href="#18-01-2013"><hr><h2><b>January 18, 2013</b></h2></a> 3282<blockquote><p>This must be Thursday. I never could get the hang of Thursdays. - The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.</p></blockquote> 3283 3284<p><a href=downloads/toybox-0.4.3.tar.bz2>Toybox 0.4.3</a> is based on 3285<a href=http://landley.net/hg/toybox/shortlog/793>commit 793</a>. There 3286are now exactly 100 commands in defconfig (of a little over 220 on the 3287<a href=roadmap.html>todo list</a>).</p> 3288 3289<p>Elie De Brauwer added the rev command, cleaned up tac, implemented the -s 3290and -f flags for seq, added -v and -i to killall (and fixed killall not to 3291kill itself before finishing its pid list), and added to the test suite. 3292Felix Janda added -m to mkdir, pwd -L and -P, and more test suite entries.</p> 3293 3294<p>Rob Landley added the losetup command, and fixed the existing ls, cp, and 3295readlink commands. The segfault in ls 3296happened when it couldn't determine the screen size (last release changed the 3297default to -C and a screen size of 0 made column view unhappy), and cp got an 3298extensive rewrite bringing it up to date with the dirtree changes and fixing 3299a number of things it never did right in the first place. The xabspath() 3300code in the library now handles a symlink after ".." properly (and the test 3301suite checks for it).</p> 3302 3303<p>Infrastructure-wise the code is better about automatically setting the 3304error return code properly. Now error_msg() sets the exit code to 1 if it's 3305still defaulting to 0, and the global exit path does a fflush(NULL) with error 3306bit check rather than trying to be quite so granular about flushing. (That 3307means if we use printf() instead of xprintf() it still exits with the right 3308error code, it just doesn't end the program early on an output error.) 3309Minor bugfix so TOYBOX_DEBUG 3310doesn't always warn about the lack of suid bit when toybox is built with 3311at least one STAYROOT command. Bugfix for the option [grouping] logic 3312(and then further fixes to the error reporting pointed out by Ashwini Sharma). 3313dirtree_handle_callback() now has a prefix like the rest of the dirtree 3314functions. A lot of stuff doing manual path handling was switched to using 3315libc basename() (including, embarassingly, the basename command), which means 3316it now correctly detects "/trailing/slash/" which the previous code didn't.</p> 3317 3318<p>Also, last release included some accidentally checked in debug code that 3319disabled compiler optimization, so the binary size bloated a bit. It's back 3320to -Os by default now.</p> 3321 3322<a name="15-12-2012" /><a href="#15-12-2012"><hr><h2><b>December 15, 2012</b></h2></a> 3323<blockquote><p>"The major difference between a thing that might go wrong and a 3324thing that cannot possibly go wrong is that when a thing that cannot possibly 3325go wrong goes wrong it usually turns out to be impossible to get at or repair." 3326</p><p>- The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.</p></blockquote> 3327 3328<p><a href=downloads/toybox-0.4.2.tar.bz2>Toybox 0.4.2</a> is based on 3329<a href=http://landley.net/hg/toybox/shortlog/749>commit 749</a> and is 3330just a resync. Linux 3.7 came out, meaning it's time to do an Aboriginal 3331Linux release, and that should use a stable version of toybox. So here's 3332a new stable version.</p> 3333 3334<p>The new commands are cut (from Jason Kyungwan Han), touch 3335(from Choubey Ji), expand (from Jonathan Clairembault, and he fixed a 3336bug in login), and rm (from Rob Landley). Felix Janda added UTF-8 3337support infrastructure (for non-ascii character sets) with a config option. 3338Elie De Brauwer added tests for cat and sha1sum, and -so options to pidof. 3339The "ls" command defaults to -C (column view) now, and "readlink" now supports 3340-fenq.</p> 3341 3342<p>Portability work: toybox should now build against the musl C library, 3343and against older glibc versions (circa 2008, much before that and kernel 3344features we depend on start to drop out).</p> 3345 3346<p>The whole codebase got reindented from "one tab" to "two spaces" per 3347level. The option parsing logic now understands [groups] of commands (when more 3348than one in a group is selected it can switch the others off, or error out, 3349or other things). The error_exit() infrastructure can now longjmp back to an 3350earlier point instead of exiting. Each toys/* directory now has a README, 3351the first line of which is the fancy name menuconfig uses for the directory 3352(so no more hardwired directory list in scripts/genconfig.sh).</p> 3353 3354<p>Fixed a filehandle leak in getmountlist(). 3355Pass parent pointer to dirtree_add_node() so it can give error messages with 3356full path. The yesno() function now always reads from stdin and writes to 3357stderr (we can retry tty checking complexity once we've got commands needing 3358it).</p> 3359 3360<p>The open group broke their website so the 3361<a href=http://opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9699919799>old links</a> to POSIX 2008 3362now <a href=http://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9699919799>need to start with 3363pubs</a>. Some of the links in the tree have been updated, others haven't while 3364I wait to see if their webmaster notices and fixes it.</p> 3365 3366<p>(I note that the current rm implementation is not technically posix compliant 3367because the standard requires infinite recursion depth and the current 3368implementation uses one filehandle per level. I can add a config option 3369to do it Posix's way, which is more brittle and needs extra security checks, 3370but am waiting for somebody to complain first. The default "ulimit -n" is 1024 3371filehandles, so drilling down over 1000 nested subdirectories).</p> 3372 3373<a name="13-11-2012" /><a href="#13-11-2012"><hr><h2><b>November 13, 2012</b></h2></a> 3374<blockquote><p>"Rule Six: The winning team shall be the first team that wins." 3375- The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.</p></blockquote> 3376 3377<p><a href=downloads/toybox-0.4.1.tar.bz2>Toybox 0.4.1</a> is based on 3378<a href=http://landley.net/hg/toybox/shortlog/691>commit 691</a>.</p> 3379 3380<p>Elie De Brauwer contributed usleep, Ashwini Kumar contributed du, and 3381Kyungwan Han contributed vconfig. Other new commands include switch_root and 3382md5sum, and the remaining shell wrappers are now proper commands (dos2unix, 3383unix2dos).</p> 3384 3385<p>The patch command now supports -l, and gethostname is now enabled by 3386default. The df command follows symlinks to get the actual device name. 3387Felix Janda added -m support to wc (for utf8).</p> 3388 3389<p>On the infrastructure side, the commands have now been grouped into 3390"posix", "lsb", and "other" subdirectories (for things required by Posix-2008, 3391the Linux Standard Base 4.1, and commands in neither). This affects menuconfig 3392and the actual source layout (toys/cp.c is now toys/posix/cp.c, and so on). 3393An android directory is planned (see the updated 3394<a href=roadmap.html#android>android roadmap analysis</a>).</p> 3395 3396<p>The FLAG_ macros for command option parsing and TT alias for the command's 3397global block are now automatically generated, commands should 3398#define FOR_commandname before #including <toys.h> to get the macros for that 3399command.</p> 3400 3401<p>An upgrade to the build infrastructure now allows commands with _ and - 3402in them, such as switch_root.</p> 3403 3404<p>Bugfixes: Avery Pennarun spotted a case where ls showed uid twice instead of 3405uid and gid, and that nice was using the wrong range of numbers. 3406The ls command also recursed inappropriately last time (not quite 3407properly converted for the dirtree changes last release), and now it's 3408fixed. Roy Tam pointed out a glitch in sh, and fixed df's percentage 3409calculation to match the POSIX spec. The kernel build didn't like our mktemp 3410and it does now. The wc command wasn't quite posix compliant (trailing spaces 3411break stuff). The ls command recursed inappropriately last time (not quite 3412properly converted for the dirtree changes last release), and now it's 3413fixed. The catv command wasn't displaying byte 255 correctly. Some lib 3414fixes (thinko in xpidfile). Fixed uname -m when running a 32 bit x86 binary 3415on an x86-64 host (it lies and says the system is i686, i586, or i486 depending 3416on what the toolchain that built the binary supported. This makes builds in 3417a 32 bit chroot on a 64 bit kernel break less.) The df command was checking 3418partitions in the wrong order (displaying undermounts instead of overmounts: 3419this used to work but some library code changed out from under it and it 3420wasn't updated to match until now). Felix Janda filled out the test suite 3421some more. The patch file creation logic got tweaked several times to 3422successfully apply more patches. Support for older (pre 2.10) glibc 3423versions was added to portability.h.</p> 3424 3425<p>Miscelaneous cleanups all around (mknod, sha1sum, logname), including a 3426rewrite of taskset to be less dependent on libc getting the headers right. All 3427the command headers should now point to the current relevant standards 3428document, where applicable.</p> 3429 3430<p>This news page had old news entries from before the relaunch moved into 3431a separate <a href=oldnews.html>oldnews</a> page.</p> 3432 3433<p>I forgot to create <a href=bin>static binaries</a> last time, but they're 3434back now.</p> 3435</span> 3436 3437<a name="23-07-2012" /><a href="#23-07-2012"><hr><h2><b>July 23, 2012</b></h2></a> 3438<blockquote><p>"Ford", Arthur said. "There's an infinite number of monkeys 3439out here who want to talk to us about this script for Hamlet they've worked 3440out." - The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.</p></blockquote> 3441 3442<p><a href=downloads/toybox-0.4.0.tar.bz2>Toybox 0.4.0</a> is based on 3443<a href=http://landley.net/hg/toybox/shortlog/640>commit 640</a>.</p> 3444 3445<p>The new <a href=status.html>status page</a> is calculated from 3446the roadmap info, and should be easier to keep up to date in future.</p> 3447 3448<p>Andre Renaud contributed od and modinfo. Elie De Brauwer contributed 3449taskset, bugfixes to cmp and tail, and tests for sort and tail. Kyungwan Han 3450contributed passwd. Gaurang Shastri contributed w. Ashwini Sharma spotted a 3451case where dirtree was adding extra slashes to a path.</p> 3452 3453<p>I rewrote od, cleaned up comm, documented the 3454<a href=code.html#lib_llist>llist</a> and 3455<a href=code.html#lib_dirtree>dirtree</a> infrastructure, added an -r option 3456to date (and fixed a bug where -u wouldn't override /etc/localtime), 3457fixed bugs in chmod +stw, fixed ls to show suid bits properly when the 3458corresponding executable bit wasn't set, and worked around a longstanding 3459glibc bug where static linking prevents stdout from automatically flushing 3460pending output on exit.</p> 3461 3462<a name="25-06-2012" /><a href="#25-06-2012"><hr><h2><b>June 25, 2012</b></h2></a> 3463<blockquote><p>"For a moment, nothing happened. Then, after a second or so, nothing continued to happen." - The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.</p></blockquote> 3464 3465<p><a href=downloads/toybox-0.3.1.tar.bz2>Toybox 0.3.1</a> is based on commit 3466<a href=http://landley.net/hg/toybox/shortlog/607>commit 607</a>. It's 3467mostly a bugfix release for ls -l (which was unhappy on targets other than 3468x86-64), plus a new "date" from Andre Renaud and rewritten chgrp/chown which 3469now support the full set of posix flags, plus a little work on the test 3470suite and some more header tweaks towards eventual compatability with the 3471musl libc.</p> 3472 3473<p>The todo list runneth over, but "release early, release often", so here 3474it is. The roadmap and documentation are a bit behind, and I've got ~40 3475pending submissions to review. I need to catch up...</p> 3476</span> 3477 3478<a name="12-06-2012" /><a href="#12-06-2012"><hr><h2><b>June 12, 2012</b></h2></a> 3479<blockquote><p>"For instance, on the planet Earth, man had always assumed that 3480he was more intelligent than dolphins because he had achieved so much - the 3481wheel, New York, wars and so on - whilst all the dolphins had ever done was 3482muck about in the water having a good time. But conversely, the dolphins had 3483always believed that they were far more intelligent than man - for precisely 3484the same reasons." - The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.</p></blockquote> 3485 3486<p>It's well past time for <a href=downloads/toybox-0.3.0.tar.bz2>toybox 0.3.0</a>, 3487so here it is, based 3488on <a href=http://landley.net/hg/toybox/shortlog/595>commit 595</a>, and the 3489statically linked <a href=downloads/binaries>prebuilt binaries</a> should 3490actually be statically linked this time (thanks Ashwini Sharma for spotting 3491that).</p> 3492 3493<p>It's hard to figure out where to cut a release, because development 3494doesn't stop. "Long before now" is the obviuos answer, of course. 3495The project's maintainer also moved house during this development cycle, which 3496threw things off for a bit (so many boxes). Releases should hopefully be a bit 3497more frequent from here on.</p> 3498 3499<p>The big things Rob worked on this time were the new dirtree (directory 3500tree traversal) infrastructure, and a complete rewrite of ls using that 3501which should now implement all 26 posix options.</p> 3502 3503<p>Georgi Chorbadzhiyski added printenv, whoami, mkdir, mkfifo, chmod, chown, 3504chgrp, and uniq. He also added fraction and extension support to sleep (so if 3505you need a quarter-second sleep, it can do that now), and fixed a build bug 3506on slackware.</p> 3507 3508<p>Daniel Walter contributed a string to mode_t parser (in use by chmod and 3509mkdir -m). Ilya Kuzmich contributed comm. Elie De Brauwer added mountpoint, 3510vmstat, logname, login, and mktemp. Kevin Chase did some portability cleanups. 3511Pere Orga fixed some documentation.</p> 3512 3513<p>The "tac" and "clear" commands are now normal commands instead of shell 3514wrappers, and the header #includes have been cleaned up a bit to remove 3515deprecated functions and attempt to increase compatability with the bionic and 3516musl C libraries, "tail" should now use lseek() for large files, and "id" got 3517some cleanups and bugfixes.</p> 3518 3519<p>The new TOYBOX_FLOAT configuration option selects whether or not 3520to include floating point support (for embedded targets where that's 3521problematic).</p> 3522 3523<p>Several random bugfixes: unshare() might actually build portably now, 3524yes 'n' | cp -i should no longer bypass stdin and prompt via the tty, the 3525SUID support no longer drops permissions going through the toybox 3526multiplexer command, and a bugfix to xargs -0 means it should no longer 3527segfault. (I have a pending bug report about xargs not doing the full 3528posix whitespace handling that -0 obsoleted, but I'll deal with that next 3529release.)</p> 3530 3531<p>The build infrastructure is now automatically generating FLAG_ macros 3532for the options, but currently with the wrong names. Some more macro glue 3533is necessary, which I haven't quite figured out how to do yet.</p> 3534 3535<p>A defconfig toybox at the start of the $PATH has successfully built 3536Linux From Scratch (in my Aboriginal Linux project). The commands that 3537'default n' in the config are often still broken, cleanup is ongoing. 3538(The new dirtree stuff broke several of them that haven't been converted 3539yet, but if I wait until everything works we won't have a release before 35401.0, so here's a checkpoint.)</p> 3541 3542 3543<a name="03-03-2012" /><a href="#03-03-2012"><hr><h2><b>March 3, 2012</b></h2></a> 3544 3545<blockquote><p>"They went unnoticed at Goonhilly, passed over Cape Canaveral 3546without a blip, and Woomera and Jodrell Bank looked straight through them. 3547Which was a pity, because it was exactly the sort of thing they'd been looking 3548for all these years."</p></p>- The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.</p> 3549</p></blockquote> 3550 3551<p>Here's <a href=downloads/toybox-0.2.1.tar.bz2>toybox 0.2.1</a> based 3552on <a href=http://landley.net/hg/toybox/shortlog/512>commit 512</a>. This 3553time around, there are statically linked <a href=downloads/binaries>prebuilt 3554binaries</a> for various embedded targets.</p> 3555 3556<p>It's been a busy few weeks, almost entirely due to new contributors. (I 3557have not quite been keeping up.)</p> 3558 3559<p>Elie De Brauwer contributed free, uptime, swapon, swapoff, lsmod, mknod, 3560insmod, rmmod, and fixed a bug in basename. Andre Renaud contributed ls, ln, 3561realpath, and hostname. Andres Heck contributed pidof and killall. Daniel 3562Walter wrote kill and extended id. Timothy Elliott contributed tail and tests 3563for cmp. Frank Bergmann sent a warning fix. Bryce Fricke added -i to cp. 3564Nathan McSween pointed out an optimization. Georgi Chorbadzhiyski fixed 3565cross compiling to work more reliably.</p> 3566 3567<p>(My own contribution this time around was just tightening up other people's 3568code, a build fix to unshare, some random bugfixes, and so on. My only new 3569code this time around was writing a bash replacement for the existing python 3570bloat-o-meter.)</p> 3571 3572<p>Last time (the 0.2.0 release) included the first pass at an id command from 3573Tim Bird, env and basename from Tryn Mirell, cmp and head from Timothy Elliott, 3574more bugfixes from Nathan McSween and Elie De Brauwer, and Luis Felipe Strano 3575Moraes did a first pass at the who command plus other bugfixes and 3576optimizations.</p> 3577 3578<p>(For that release I did xargs, cal, truncate, unlink, nohup, tty, wc, link, 3579dirname, unshare, and various infrastructure tweaks, but it took me 3 months 3580and those guys did their stuff in a week or so.)</p> 3581 3582 3583<a name="12-02-2012" /><a href="#12-02-2012"><hr><h2><b>February 12, 2012</b></h2></a> 3584<blockquote><p> 3585"for though it has many omissions and contains much that is apocryphal, or at 3586least wildly inaccurate, it scores over the older, more pedestrian work in two 3587important respects..."</p> 3588<p> - The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy</p></blockquote> 3589 3590<p>Here's the first BSD licensed release, 3591<a href=downloads/toybox-0.2.0.tar.bz2>toybox-0.2.0</a>, more a synchronization 3592point than anything particularly useful. 47 commands in a reasonably 3593ready-to-use state (what "make defconfig" builds), another ten or so partially 3594finished stubs ("make allyesconfig"), and several 3595patches pending on the mailing list I need to review and merge.</p> 3596 3597<p>More to come...</p> 3598 3599<hr> 3600<a name="15-11-2011" /><a href="#15-11-2011"><hr><h2><b>November 15, 2011</b></h2></a> 3601- Back from the dead, Toybox is now under a 2 3602clause BSD license, and aiming to become the default command line 3603implementation of Android systems everywhere.</p> 3604 3605<p>More to come...</p> 3606 3607<hr> 3608 3609<p><a href=oldnews.html>Old news</a> from before the relaunch.</p> 3610 3611<!--#include file="footer.html" --> 3612
