Toybox combines common Linux command line utilities together +into a single BSD-licensed executable that's simple, small, fast, +reasonably standards-compliant, and powerful enough to turn Android into +a development environment. See the links on the left for details.
++ +Only six people in the Galaxy knew that the job of the +Galactic President was not to wield power but to attract attention +away from it. Zaphod Beeblebrox was amazingly good at his job.
+- The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
Despite everything, Toybox 0.7.3 +(git commit) +is out. The new commands this time are ftpget, ftpput, microcom, and ascii.
+ +
We also had two command _demotions_ out of defconfig: +hostid got moved to toys/example and +switched to "default n" because despite still being in posix +the concept of a unique 32 bit number identifying a system is something +Linux outgrew about the time Pauline Middelink wrote the first IP +Masquerading code. And Elliott did a complete rewrite of dmesg introducing +two codepaths that I didn't get a chance to unify and didn't want to +hold up the release for, so that's back in pending.
+ +New features: Rob added units to find -atime and friends +(with the legacy -amin alias). Elliott added color and -w to dmesg, fallocate +-o, and improved file's ELF parsing. Steve Muckle added -d and finit_module +support to modprobe. Rob and Elliott tweaked the +ps/top display format a bit more (extending the USER field from 8 to 18 chars +and putting + at the end of string fields that got truncated). +df -a isn't entirely new, but wasn't documented and needed a bugfix.
+ +Bugfixes: +Last release broke oneit because -c didn't get moved to xopen_stdio() (oops). +Rob and Elliott simultaneously spotted ps padding each line to 99999 +chars when there's no tty (serial console or adb); now it pads to 80 in +that case but also switches on -w to avoid field truncation. The "tty" +field also sometimes had trailing debris (that's fixed now). And "top" was +endlessly redrawing with out tty because receipt of the ANSI size probe +results would set SIGWINCH, and handling that sent another ansi probe. (Sigh.) +And while we're there, replace "ADDR" with "BIT" in ps -l so there are +more than 4 chars left for the "CMD" field on 64 bit systems.
+ +Izabera pointed out that split -b and -l can't mix, and suggested seq should +multiply to avoid accumulating rounding errors from repeated fractional +increments. Wang Xiao Jian fixed a bug in sort -k. +Elliott let getprop use the @ character in property names, and +Dimitry Ivanov removed the name length limit for system properties. +Elliott also improved some error reporting and improved top -H's display +of thread names. + +
Josh Gao pointed out that recursive operations on . and .. could be ignored +in chmod -R (and the resulting generic fix to dirtree_notdotdot() fixed +it in several other places).
+ +Justin Cormack caught tar producing a warning to stdout that screwed up +"tar c" to stdout. +Rob fixed an option parsing bug (where switching off a --longopt in menuconfig +confused the parser), and another one where an option excluding itself +(ala "abc[-ab][!abc]" with "command -a -b") would segfault.
+ +There's some sort of gcc stack over-optimization bug where musl-libc's +version of vfork() doesn't get marked with attribute(returns_twice) so +stack varabiles in the same function after that get semi-randomly overwritten +when the optimizer decides to reclaim the space. So add the attribute +to the function the XVFORK() wrapper macro calls. (It's a nommu thing.)
+ +Fixed a couple variable size mismatch bugs that were only tested on 64 bit +(printf %x 64) or only tested on 32 bit (modprobe), removed some +unnecessary casts in stat.
+ +Continuing attempts to build under Android NDK brought up that posix +defines the global 'stdout' as a macro, which older versions of bionic +turned into an array member, but a function was using it as an argument +name. (This worked in the AOSP build because it only builds against current +bionic, where there's a global 'stdout'.)
+ +Several commits argued with clang's warning generation, eventually +settling on a variant of __attribute__((__shut_up__)).
+ +Android should no longer give spurious error messages +when you "ps -A | head" about EPIPE on output. (Older versions of bionic +set an error handler on SIGPIPE, but it shouldn't do that now. More recent +versions of adb set the SIGPIPE handler to SIGIGN instead of SIGDFL, +leading to write returning an error message instead of silently killing +the program. So we set it back to the default.)
+ +Docs: +Removed website link to the gmane archive (which didn't survive gmane's +change of ownership). The FAQ now answers a _second_ question. (Woo!) +Some roadmap updates.
+ +Build tweaks: +Upgraded "make install_airlock" target to only warn about missing +commands (unless $PEDANTIC is set) when it sets up the hermetic build +path. (The plan is still to implement everything but the toolchain +binaries in toybox, but in the meantime we're symlinking other stuff from +the $HOST that isn't ready yet. See +mkroot for an example using +this.)
+ +Elliott and Rob continue to poke at building toybox with Android's NDK, +but it's a work in progress (thread). Various changes +removing libcutils dependencies and adding an selinux dependency to getprop +are fallout from this.
+ +Cross-compiling from Macs needs to use "gsed" instead of apple's +version, so teach the build to use that name if it exists in the $PATH. +If you try to build without running config first, you should get better +error reporting now. Added a workaround for Centos' broken "which" command +producing output when it _can't_ find a name in the $PATH.
+ +Library: +The new dirtree flag DIRTREE_PROC skips non-numeric entries so things +like ps and top can scan /proc more efficiently.
+ ++ +Probability factor of one to one. We have normality. I repeat, +we have normality. Anything you still can't cope with is therefore your +own problem.
- The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
Toybox 0.7.2 +(git commit) +is out.
+ +During this development cycle, Elliott Hughes got interviewed +on the ADB podcast +and Rob Landley got interviewed on Linux Luddites (again). +Both talk about toybox and many other things. +The web page also grew a new FAQ page, currently with +just the one.
+ +New comands added to defconfig are tunctl, +log, start, stop, and sendevent. +The commands file and netstat got promoted out of pending. +Pending added chrt, setfattr, and getfattr, and saw +a lot of cleanups to diffstat and dd but not enough to promote them to +defconfig yet. A new toys/net directory was added, moving ifconfig, netcat, +netstat, rfkill, and tunctl there so far.
+ +Upgrades: All commands now parse --version when they understand +--help, but "true" and "false" should now ignore their arguments entirely. +We taught stat to handle "%12x" and "%.12x" printf-style escapes, which +apparently other versions do. The ifconfig output now shows the interface's +device driver. Added patch -d and --dry-run, wc can now do -cm together, +find has a NOP -noleaf so scripts that use that don't break, add -c to md5sum +and sha1sum. Elliott taught ps to treat extra aguments as additional -p +pids, implemented xxd -s, did a number of upgrades to file (added -HL, +support for ar files, improved ELF support to report android API level +and stripped/not stripped and it no longer prints a guessed build ID type). +Elliott also added optional build-time support for using openssl's +assembly-optimized md5sum/sha1sum implementations (leading to a new +design policy on shared libraries).
+ +Bugfixes: Too many fixes to "ps" and "touch" to list, from both +Elliott and Rob. Rob taught sed to handle s/[[:space:]/]// type sequences +properly, switched grep to a better +workaround for glibc bug 17829, made sed -i preserve ownership when run as root, +made du max out at 2 terabytes instead of 2 gigabytes on 32-bit systems +(it was always designed to, but was missing a typecast), +fixed the option parsing infrastructure (config options that remove command +line options got the placeholders wrong), fix to printf for printing +octal digits and handling the (posix-mandated) difference between %b and +non-%b octal output, reading from "-" no longer closes stdin when done, +netcat -L works with nommu (although it may need more portability work), +and you can now "make test_scankey" if you want to. Several commands +(stat, makedeves, chgrp, cp, find) handled user name lookup failure badly +(stat was segfaulting if you interrogated a file belonging to a nonexistent +user, "chown 12345 file" errored out if you didn't have that user +in /etc/passwd... now they should all print/accept the number when +appropriate). "LC_ALL=C ls -Cs --color" produces the same output +as other versions (two spaces padding, -k hardwired on).
+ +
Kyungsik Lee fixed a bug +in cp (readlink() doesn't actually null terminate the string it reads in), +Elliott Hughes made pgrep/pkill return success/failure, fixed trailing +whitespace in netstat, fixed a SMACK symbol conflict due to linux/xattr.h +changing, fixed ls -sh, and added a lot of +stuff to the roadmap page. +Izabera pointed out cmp -l and -s can't be selected at the same time, +that timeout was never actually checking -v, that ls should default to -q +when output is to a tty, and that "file -" would sometimes try to open "-" +instead of stdin. +Usischev Yury pointed out a use after free error, and that id shouldn't +call exit() directly. Matthias Urhahn pointed out that stat(2) returns +hardwired 512-byte units, so stat.c was wrong. David Hedges pointed out +that route could only handle 10 character interface names when the kernel +can do 15 (it's still in pending for a reason, but fixed). Evgenii +Stepanov found and helped diagnose one of the more subtle ps bugs fixed +this time around.
+ +Calling "make test_blah" no longer causes make to error out if the last +test fails (and thus returns a nonzero error code). +Building single commands and the multiplexer used to require a "make clean" +between them (because they had different config files both of which were older +than generated/config.h so it didn't get rebuilt; now it just always +rebuilds it).
+ +The defconfig build is now slightly less broken on older centos versions +(although the consensus is that Centos is just generally broken).
+ +
Several commands were over-using xprintf(), which flushes its output +to check for error (something you only need to do maybe once per line, +and even then maybe only in loops because xexit() flushes and checks +ferror() for you and adjusts the exit code if we wrote stuff to stdout +that couldn't be printed). Lots of little flushes are inefficient, +so most things can use normal printf(). (Retransmission +of short writes is presumably libc's problem since it's buffering the +output and all.)
+ +Library: +New library functions readlink0() and readlinkat0() which properly null +terminates the symlink value (which the stock libc function inexplicably +doesn't). +The new do_lines() function interates reading lines from a filehandle +and calling a function on each line. +New function pollinate() factoring out netcat's poll() loop so things +like telnet can use it. +New functions getusername() and getgroupname() return a +char * given a uid/gid (and return a string representation of the number +if the lookup fails), and xgetpwnamid/xgetgrnamid were renamed to +xgetuid/xgetgid and now return an integer instead of a struct (also helping +handle lookup failures, you can still return the uid/get for "12345").
+ +Switched atolx() to use long long internally. +Renamed xopen() to xopen_stdio() and made a new xopen() that never returns +stdin, stdout, or stderr (duping /dev/null into the filehandles as necessary). +New function xopenro() opens a file read only with one less argument, and +understands that "-" means stdin. New flag WARN_ONLY tells these functions +to just print a warning on failure, and return -1 instead of exiting. +Misc new functions like openro() which defaults to the WARN_ONLY behavior +and notstdio() which dup()s a filehandle up beyond stdin/out/err backfilling +with /dev/null as necessary. The WARN_ONLY flag let us remove the failok +argument from loopfiles().
+ +New TOYFLAG_NOHELP disables --help processing (which "true" and "false" +should not do). + +
The test suite now has NOSPACE=1 to ignore whitespace (using diff -b to +check results), which helps TEST_HOST pass the same tests as toybox. +Fixes to chattr and date tests. It also has a new variable $C with the +absolute path to the command being tested (bypassing shell builtins), +and a function testcmd() which is just like testing() except it prepends +the command name ($C) to the test command line as well as the test +description.
+ ++ +When the 'Drink' button is pressed it makes an instant but +highly detailed examination of the subject's taste buds, a spectroscopic +analysis of the subject's metabolism, and then sends tiny experimental +signals down the neural pathways to the taste centres of the subject's +brain to see what is likely to be well received. However, no-one knows +quite why it does this because it then invariably delivers a cupful of +liquid that is almost, but not quite, entirely unlike tea.
+- The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
Toybox 0.7.1 +(git commit) +is out. (Yes, I forgot to update the --version string, but I already +uploaded the binaries.)
+ +The website has https support now, you can "make cat ps ls" +to get standalone commands (and "make list list_pending" to see what's +available), and a whole lot of bugfixes and new options to existing +commands.
+ +Rob implemented ulimit. In pending, Elliott Hughes implemented +file. and Lipi Lee implemented a simple wget. (Pending also had minor +cleanups to more and lsof, but no promotions this time around.)
+ +Izabera implemented env -u, suggested adding seq -w, made factor +use full unsigned 64 bit math even on 32 bit platforms, pointed out base64 +-w0 should disable wrapping, and sped up wc -c. +Elliott Hughes added mount -o relatime, xxd -p -r, and od -w. +Sameer Pradhan (or possibly Bilal Qureshi) suggested adding stat -tL -c %m%t%T. +Tom Cherry added getprop -Z. Paul Barker added hostname -b and -F. +Rob added ls -b, made ls -q work with utf8, +made sed -f - read from stdin, and added top -O (like ps -O).
+ +Elliott and Rob added Thread support to ps and top, +with -o TID, TNAME. We also added -o PCY (android scheduling policy), +-o BIT (process is 32 or 64 bit), and -o TNAME now shows the parent +command name for threads.
+ +Rob added the sed invocations to convert tabs/spaces and back to +design.html. Isaac Dunham updated hexedit's help text. +Jakob Flierl pointed out a broken URL in the README.
+ +Rob also redid the naming scheme of sed's pattern manipulation code to +remove the gratuitous references to Roger Zelazny's "Amber" series, since it +was confusing people.
+ +Grep -H and -n should now work properly with -ABC. Andy Chu pointed out an +out of bounds access for zero length lines in rev, fixed a buffer overflow +in diff -r, and fixed operator precedence in expr (although Rob is rewriting +chunks of expr so toysh can use its plumbing for $(( )) ). +Patrick Ohly fixed the too-aggressive suid permission dropping logic. +Josh Gao fixed a segfault when find -iname got no argument, and +made tail -f work right with just one file argument. +Tom Marshall cleaned up tar's long filename support and improved +the tar tests, and reported another find bug (with -iname -o -iname not +tracking copy lifetimes properly) that got fixed.
+ +Elliott Hughes fixed wc -c to not trust zero length files to actually be +zero length (/proc does that), fixed "mount -o rw,remount /system" on +Android, removed trailing spaces on ps -o cmdline, fixed pkill -9 and +the corresponding tests, made "insmod -" work, fixed top -b and tail -NUM, +pointed out that ps shouldn't trim numeric fields for display size limits, +and added some more +explicit "sort" calls to make pipelines so build tempfiles are easier to cache. +Rob fixed an insane sed thing the perl 5.22 build was doing. +Fixed mount -o to properly pass in leftover string data, and +documented how to use toybox to mount nfs (warning: kernel patch +to fix some bitrot in the kernel NFS driver's string parsing attached +to that message).
+ +George Burgess IV corrected some variable types in traceroute. +Base64 now wraps == properly. Fixed two bzcat segfaults reported by +John Regehr. Andy Chu found a segfault in "sed -e 'c\'" with no trailing +line, and implemented mv -n and cp -n. The cyanogenmod guys pointed out that +cp -a shouldn't complain if a non-root user can't chown, and we added +the output path to cp -r error messages while we were there (before was just +the filename).
+ +Samuel Holland fixed blkid's handling of vfat labels, and +fixed a segfault when basename was passed an empty string and an empty +suffix. Davis Mosenkovs fixed touch -t seconds parsing. +Rob fixed a bunzip bug reported by John Regehr (the bad CRC +error message was printing a NUL argument).
+ +Not all of the commands build standalone, but more of them do now; +scripts/single.sh can now build a "mv" that isn't actually "cp". +The dependencies are more granualr, so "make top; make ps" no longer +produces a broken ps that ignores -A (because ps.o wasn't getting rebuilt +even though top had the FLAG macros for -A zeroed).
+ +Rob added a warning when building commands out of +pending. (The pending directory is full of code that hasn't been +properly vetted. Use at your own risk.)
+ +New build targets let you build individual commands by name, ala +"make ls cat ps", and you can run the test suite for each standalone +command with "make test_ls" and such. +"make list" shows all such standalone commands in defconfig, and +"make list_pending" shows unfinished commands from toys/pending +("make list list_pending" shows both together). "make clean" now deletes +these filenames at the top level, and the corresponding unstripped files +live in the directory generated/unstripped.
+ +Nicholas Boichat suggested switching make.sh to use $! for process +enumeration during parallel builds (which is both more efficient and more +portable), and suggested shell builtin replacements for wc/awk/sed so the +build loop has fewer forks now.
+ +Lots of work on the test suite, much of it due to Andy Chu. It now +consistently prints the name of the command being tested at the start of each +test (and the common infrastructure does that, not each individual test), and +"make tests" actually runs all the available tests now. +Seperated pgrep and pkill tests, split lsattr/chattr, added fstype and base64 +tests. The "tests/files" directory now collects files for tests to +use, with blkid, bzcat, and utf8 subdirectories: the $FILES variable +gives a path to it, so "$FILES/blkid/ext2.bz2" and so on. +The testsuite now has test files with 3 different types of "not utf8 output" +sequences that require escaping, plus some combining character torture +tests, direction reversals, and so on.
+ +Added dependencies on TOYBOX_FORK to various pending commands that need +nommu conversion (which should fix the allyesconfig build).
+ +Static builds with selinux should work again.
+ +New bufgetgrgid() and bufgetpwuid() functions cache previous lookup info +rather than repeatedly traversing /etc/passwd and /etc/group (which is slow). +Added xpipe() to lib to catch pipe creation failure. +The HELP_ macros generated by config2help.c now use a capital prefix +to avoid collicing with help_exit() and such.
+ +The dirtree infrastructure got a cleanup pass in preparation for adding +infinite recursion depth support (needed by rm -r), updated the +documentation to describe the new +semantics (removing dirtree_start() and adding dirtree_flagread()). +Now dirtree_recurse() takes the new dirfd as an argument.
+ +Split out _xexit() from xexit() and let sigatexit() set multiple +callbacks.
+ +For years the man pages have said to #include
Debian unstable started needing an extra header #include for some reason, and +although printf("%.*s", INT_MAX, s) worked fine on Ubuntu 12.04 it +didn't on 14.04, so added a workaround for that. Typecast a printf because +wchar_t isn't a rigidly defined size. RLIMIT_RTTIME was +added to the kernel in 2008 but you can't expect uClibc to have noticed yet, +nor did it #define MS_RELATIME (added in 2006), or prlimit (2010)... +(Given the improvements in musl and bionic, uClibc support may be dropped +in a future release.) Given that the xattr functions were added during +linux 2.5, we can #include its header unconditionally.
+ +Renamed basename_r() to something else to avoid conflicting with freebsd's +libc, and both scripts/install.h and scripts/config2help.c no longer include +toys.h (to make cross-compiling from systems we don't run on easier).
+ +Debian bug 635570 did something unspeakably nonportable, depending on +"sed -e 'a\'" (with no next line of the pattern, so an unterminated +continuation) to add a newline to the last line of input if and only if +that last line of the input didn't have a newline, and to take no other +action. This is well into "depending on a bug" territory, but we implemented +it because otherwise Debian's install broke. (Of course this behavior +is undocumented, non-obvious, and doesn't really make logical sense.)
+ +CONFIG_TOYBOX_NORECURSE now disables the stack measuring logic (which +was giving some "security" code fits). Also we typecast pointers to (long) +before comparing them to avoid spurious compiler "optimizations" that +break the code.
+ ++ +"I checked it very thoroughly," said the computer, "and that +quite definitely is the answer. I think the problem, to be quite honest with +you, is that you've never actually known what the question is." +- The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.
Toybox 0.7.0 +(git commit) +is out.
+ +The new commands in defconfig are iotop, top, pgrep, +and pkill +(most replacing corresponding versions from pending). Added grep -ABC, +swapon -d (discard), mkswap -L (label) and UUID support, and find -delete. +Izabera added free -h and unshare -f. Josh Gao implemented tail -f. +Jose Bollo submitted cp --preserve=context,attr. Kylie McClain added +mktemp -u.
+ +In pending there's the start of a vi command, and Sameer Pradhan contributed +a new dhcp6. This cycle saw several rounds of route cleanup and a little dhcp +cleanup, but neither are complete yet. Lipi Lee did some cleanup to netstat.c +and Elliott Hughes removed warnings from traceroute.
+ +Lots of updates to ps: several new -o options, -k (--sort) -O and -M, +improved compatibility with Android's historical behavior, and +extensive internal code cleanup (including the removal of all +the magic constants).
+ +Dreamhost restored the missing 11 months +to the mailing list archive, in the process deleting the month after +that. Now they've asked if I have mbox files archiving the new +gap (between December 20, 2015 to January 21, 2016, and presumably they +could also fill in the gap from December 14, 2014 to January 3, 2015 that's +been there since the last time they did this), +but due to some gmail filtering I've +never +been able to disable, my copy of those files is spread among 3 different +mbox files I'd have to sort/filter/collate. (It's on the todo list.)
+ +Added a code of conduct to the README (we're +borrowing twitter's) because somebody +made it necessary.
+ +Fixed another sed bug where any ] right after [ was skipped (not just the +first one in the range, so [[] didn't terminate). Fixed sort -f and added test cases. +Assume 80 columns in "ls -m | cat", ls -L is no longer backwards, +and ls of files with no paths no longer uses an uninitialized (zero) dirfd. +Several bugfixes +to find (Gilad Arnold fixed -perm, Daniel K. Levy fixed "find . -exec echo {}", +and while we're there I fixed find --prune, made "find . -execdir +echo {} + -execdir ls {} +" work, and ripped out the environment size +measuring code that checked for a 128k limit removed back in linux 2.6.22). +Elliott Hughes fixed the date command's parsing of 4 digit +years and documented the %s escape, fixed hwclock -u, and pointed out +that runcon needs to exec to do its job (not recursively call another +command_main() in the same process). Tom Marshall reported that blkid was +handling ext2 wrong. Mike Moreton corrected cpio extraction's uid and gid +values, and added a --no-preserve-owner option. Fixed the SUID permission +dropping logic (which was a bit over-zealous, preventing some commands from +running at all).
+ +I'm told that debian-testing broke its libc so the nsenter build breaks, +but my attempts to install the debian-testing network cd image under +qemu keep breaking. Maybe someday they'll fix it enough I can actually +reproduce the problem. (Debootstrap under unbuntu builds an ubuntu-flavored +chroot in which toybox builds fine.)
+ +Rewrite of the about.html page, tweaks to design.html, and a re-triage of +sbase in roadmap.html. Update to mkstatus.py to collate multiple span +tags with the same id, resulting in a larger status.html page (which +was previously ignoring some commands in the roadmap).
+ +Expanded the defconfig/allyesconfig/allnoconfighelp text in "make help" +to explain what they're for.
+ +Expanded toys.optargs to 64 bits so a command can have more than 32 options.
Added NOEXIT() wrapper to turn xwrap() functions into warning versions +using the existing longjump(toys.rebound) infrastructure.
Renamed dirtree->data to dirfd and stopped storing symlink length +into it (this fixed a bug where following symlinks to directories +didn't give a valid directory filehandle, noticeable with ls -Z).
New TAGGED_ARRAY() infrastructure generates index and bitmask macros +for arrays of structures starting with a name string.
New lib/linestack.c for utf8 fontmetrics (draw_str() and utf8len() +and so on), and for tracking multiple lines of text +(vi, less, shell history) that need wordwrapping and scrolling up/down.
Upgrades to lib/interestingtimes.c: scan_key() now has a timeout
+in miliseconds and recognizes more sequences including ANSI
+window size probes. New utf8 test files in tests/files/utf8 including
+sequence reversing, stacked combining chars, and all three types of
+unprintable sequences (low ascii <32 ala ^X, invalid utf8 sequences ala
+
More comma handling code in lib.c: comma_args()
Added error_msg_raw() to shut up fortify's endless static checking false +positives.
readfileat() can now realloc() in a loop to read long files +("zcat | insmod" needed it).
We're getting close to having a self-hosting development environment +using toybox for the command line. The remaining busybox commands in +Aboriginal Linux are:
+ ++ ++awk bunzip2 bzcat bzip2 dd diff expr fdisk ftpd ftpget ftpput gunzip gzip +less ping route sh sha512sum tar test tr unxz vi wget xzcat zcat +
And the remaining non-busybox commands in Aboriginal Linux's build/host +directory (from the distcc, genext2fs, e2fsprogs, zlib, and squashfs packagesi) +are:
+ ++ ++mke2fs fsck.ext2 resize2fs distcc genext2fs unsquashfs distccd mksquashfs tune2fs +
Squashfs and distcc are probably out of scope for toybox, but mke2fs, +fsck.ext2, resize2fs, genext2fs, and tune2fs should all be added to the +above "busybox" replacement list.
+ +Remind me to include this countdown in future releases. Once they've all +been replaced, the next goal is building AOSP under itself.
+ +See the full roadmap and status +pages for more details.
+ +Yes, 11 months have gone missing from the mailing list web archive.
+ +Yesterday evening Dreamhost's mailman server went down (timing out trying +to connect). I poked them about it, they +blamed +DNS, I explained that the hang was _after_ the DNS lookup and +entered the dig info into the trouble ticket showing the IPs the DNS +queries were returning, they reinstalled the server at that IP from what I +assume was their most recent backup, and that's how 11 months of messages +vanished out of the archive.
+ +I've continued to poke them about it but I honestly believe that's the best they +can do. Last time +this sort of thing happened +we went back and forth for months, so I added a link to a backup web +archive (in the nav bar on the left) that isn't controlled by dreamhost, +and thus doesn't gratuitously lose data on a regular basis. (I note +the earlier hole in Dreamhost's archive was never fixed either. That +was data never getting archived, this is a year's worth of data that +was in the archive until yesterday vanishing after the fact.)
+ +If you're wondering why the top level +list page has been "temporarily disabled" for multiple years now... you'd have +to ask Dreamhost. I know I have. More than a dozen times.
+ ++ +"Alright," said Ford. "How would you react if I said that I'm +not from Guildford after all, but from a small planet somewhere in the vicinity +of Betelgeuse?" Arthur shrugged in a so-so sort of way. "I don't know," he +said, taking a pull of beer. "Why - do you think it's the sort of thing you're +likely to say?" - The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.
Toybox 0.6.1 +(git commit) +is out.
+ +We have a new ps command with all the -o fields posix wants (although +it doesn't accept BSD non-dash option syntax yet), and bunzip2 (not just +bzcat but the proper extract-in-place command). +Sameer Pradhan added hostid and fsync. +Elliott Hughes added flock. + +
The people waiting for human readable number support (du -hH, ls -h, +and so on) can thank Elliott Hughes for implementing it. (Our output doesn't +exactly match others' because we our "binary" mode will say 1.0G instead of +1024M, which is a bug in the other one we didn't emulate.)
+ +The other big news is nommu support, tested on the new +jcore processor but presumaby working +on any nommu system. A few commands don't support nommu yet, but those +are disabled by dependencies on TOYBOX_FORK in menuconfig when building +for nommu. The roadmap now has a large section analyzing the uClinux +project (note that nommu.org is slowly replacing +uclinux.org as the standard repository of +all knowledge and wisdom about nommu. The old site contains +much that is apocryphal, or at least wildly inaccurate, and the new one +is trying to improve on that).
+ +Both "make change" and scripts/single.sh (for building standalone commands +without the multiplexer logic) now use the top level .config +for toybox global settings such as Linux Security Blanket Module selection, +(so make defconfig before change now).
+ +Documentation updates to the code and +roadmap pages.
+ +In the pending directory Sameer Pradhan added tftp, +and Elliott Hughes sent lsof. Isaac Dunham upgraded mdev, +reboot, init, login, and modprobe, and fixed a distro-specific build break in +scripts/mkflags.h. Elliott Hughes and Lipi Lee made netstat -p handle +command lines longer than 21 characters, and Elliott fixed netstat -e and +some build warnings. Yeongdeok Suh fixed a warning in dhcpd. +I started cleanup on pgrep/pkill.
+ +The multiplexer's "command not found" error exit is now 127, so now you can't +distinguish between a command not being found in the multiplexer and +the multiplexer itself not being found by the shell, because people wanted +that for some reason.
+ +Elliott Hughes made date reject invalid dates rather +than set the clock to something weird (setting the clock 100 years into the +future makes most Linux desktops surprisingly unhappy, and ntpdate won't fix it +either), fixed several ls -l display issues (user/group field ordering, +make user/group/lsmcontext left aligned), did the aforementioned +extensive work on human readable number output, fixed ionice's default +class, fixed a mv overwrite bug, made df's columns auto-size, added +--ppid and -Z to ps, and teamed up with Daniel K. Levy to fix +a segfault in find's handling of -newer -group or -user.
+ +Hyejin Kim added stat -c %T support. Colin Cross worked +on vmstat fixing +a header printing bug and calculating the bi and bo columns in the right +units. Isabella Parakiss reported that sed -e "/x/c\" -e "y" added an extra +newline and that grep -w '\(x\)\1' didn't work, both now fixed. +Alistair Strachan fixed several problems with switch_root. Kylie McClain +pointed out env should be able to clear variables via NAME= syntax. +Dima Krasner added support for running blkid without a partition (so it shows +all partitions). Hyejin Kim sent in a bunch of static analysis bug reports.
+ +Isabella Parakiss reported that sed -e "/x/c\" -e "y" added an extra +newline and that grep -w '\(x\)\1' didn't work, both now fixed. +Alistair Strachan fixed several problems with switch_root. Kylie McClain +pointed out env should be able to clear variables via NAME= syntax. +Dima Krasner added support for running blkid without a partition (so it shows +all partitions). Hyejin Kim sent in a bunch of static analysis bug reports.
+ +Two large thinko fixes in oneit: -3 was always enabled (which would +eventually block if the child never read the exiting PID numbers from its file +descriptor #3 until the pipe filled up), and the signal handlers weren't +set up right (for requesting semi-graceful halt/poweroff/reboot). +Calling install without a mode is now 0755, and install -g 0 no longer clashes +with cp --preserve. Better error message for ls -r on unreadable +directories, and ls -Z now uses O_PATH (with the /proc/self/fd/%d +workaround for kernel stupidity as necessary).
+ +Date now understands @unixtime[.fraction] and uses -D for +the set-side format (matching busybox's extension for this). The seq -f +string now checks that it's got exactly one %f escape with the correct +attributes (and a whole bunch of test cases for it). Fixed a bug +in od that screwed up the position indicator on arm and mips. +In stat the d/h units moved from %d %D to the default string. +And patch can now correctly apply hunks with trailing context to the start of +the file.
+ +The prompt argument moved out of yesno() (the caller can print the prompt +themselves). Replaced toys.exithelp with help_exit(). Added new +XVFORK() macro, and xpopen_both() calls /proc/self/exe when passed +a NULL argv (see cpio -p for example usage). Replaced toys.recurse +with toys.stacktop so the recurse or re-exec decision is now based +on bytes of stack space used. Marked a bunch of command-local functions +static.
+ +New additions to lib/ include strlower(), xconnect(), and the +aforementioned help_exit(). +The testsuite now has some infrastructure tests based on "example" +commands such as toys/examples/test_human_readable.c. +The login command finally got a long-overdue cleanup (it's one of the +commands that predate the "pending" directory but were part of the reason +for it). Hexedit had an +uninitialized variable (of course gcc didn't spot it, it was too busy +warning about "may be used uninitialized but never actually is" variables).
+ +Tweaked makefile so +"make CROSS_COMPILE=prefix-" (as well as "CROSS_COMPILE=prefix- make", +which still works). Toybox is now installed chmod -w so broken installers +(like the bunzip2 package's) that try to overwrite existing binaries won't +knock out the whole of toybox. +GCC 5.2.0 stopped being able to compile Linux 2.6.12's kconfig, but +we added a workaround. You can now build uptime without utmpx.h. +Alejandro Joya pointed out that enabling smack required smack on the host +as well as target when cross compiling, which is now fixed.
+ +Note: toybox can autodetect nommu support when building with a uClibc +toolchain such as the one from Aboriginal Linux, +but with musl-libc +you'll have to enable CONFIG_TOYBOX_MUSL_NOMMU_IS_BROKEN to work around the +fact they provide a non-functional fork() implementation that always returns +-ENOSYS, to prevent you from compile-time probing for nommu support when +cross-compiling. Unfortunately "preventing you from probing" seems to be +an explicit policy with musl, they also don't provide an "#ifdef __MUSL__" +because their library is perfect and you're only ever allowed to work around +other people's bugs, not theirs. So we have to use menuconfig to manually +enable musl-specific bug workarounds.
+ +I recreated the 0.6.0 source tarball +(new sha1sum 08fb1c23f520c25a15f262a8a95ea5b676a98d54) +because I forgot to add --prefix to the git archive command when I updated +my release script from mercurial, so the files weren't in an enclosing +directory. (Ooops.)
+ ++ ++The reason why it was published in the form of a micro sub meson electronic +component is that if it were printed in normal book form, an interstellar +hitchhiker would require several inconveniently large buildings to carry it +around in." - The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
Toybox 0.6.0 +(git commit) +is out. (Yes, git. See the previous news entry.)
+ +Sorry for the unusually long gap between releases. Since last release Ye +Olde Project Maintainer traveled to japan twice and had two more "once +a century" floods at home. (Probably a coincidence.) Still catching up.
+ +I gave another State Of The Toybox talk +(video +outline), in which I +repeat my perennial +complaint +that Wikipedia[citation needed] +still +says +toybox was relicensed before its hiatus, when relicensing was why +the hiatus ended.
+ +Since Wikipedia[citation needed] seems unable to do the +most +basic +research on +this point, and has stuck to an incorrect sequence of events for years, +I've been gradually escalating my attempts to correct them. Toybox +came out of mothballs in November 2011 because it could be +relicensed. That's what opened up a new niche busybox wasn't already +filling with a 10 year headstart.
+ + +The article has plenty of smaller issues*, but +given that I gave an entire talk at Ohio LinuxFest in 2013 +(outline, +audio) on why I switched away from GPL for +my projects, that one bugs me.
+ +There's a new android menu in menuconfig, and rather a lot of Linux +Security Module support (Smack for Tizen from Xavier Roche and José Bollo, +and SELinux for Android from Elliott Hughes; see +the Security Blanket menu under global settings in menuconfig) has +trickled in, although there's still more to come.
+ +New commands: Added reset, nproc, ionice, and iorenice. +Elliott Hughes contributed xxd, runcon, +restorecon, load_policy, getenforce, setenforce, getprop, and setprop. +Promoted shred, nsenter, and hwclock.
+ +You can once again build catv now the flag infrastructure's been updated to +let it coexist with cat -v. +And on a long plane flight I wrote +hexedit, an interactive hex editor that implements the start of +cursor control infrastructure (for eventual use by less and vi and shell +command history and so on).
+ +New options: Added sed -E as a BSD-compatible synonym for -r. +Upgraded oneit with -r (restart), -3 (send exiting PID values to child), +and signal handling. Added -v option to timeout, -m to mknod, -u to shred, +-t to dmesg, and -123 to head and tail. Added implicit "." to grep -r without +any files to work on. Hyejin Kim requested prefix support for truncate -s. +Greg Hackman added -inum to find. +Jan Cybulski added the smack side of ls -Z support. Various patches also +added -Z to mkdir, mknod, and mkfifo. +Basic cp --preserve support went in, but not yet the xattr/LSM parts.
+ +The toybox command now has a --version option, +which uses "git describe" if available.
+ +Build infrastructure: +The "make change" target now saves the output of each failed standalone +command build in a .bad file, and "make defconfig" is quieter now.
+ +Paul Barker submitted a large patch changing command install paths so +"toybox can be installed alongside busybox without confusing +update-alternatives". (There's some argument over +what the right paths should be, and I'm waiting for +people to tell me what else needs fixing because I have no idea. I've +been symlinking /bin to /usr/bin since 2002 +for +historical reasons.)
+ +Docs: The repository link now goes to github, with another link +to the commit rss feed.
+ +Elliott Hughes updated the Android section of the roadmap +(and he would know). Redid bits of scripts/mkstatus.py to make updating +status.html easier, and the README is larger.
+ +More description of option parsing in code.html, which now describes the +FLAG_x macros, switching flag macro sets with FOR_newcommand, how +configuration zeroes flag macros and using FORCE_FLAGS to suppress the +zeroing of options shared between commands. Also added description of ";" +to make --longopts take an optional =value part, and more about TOYBOX_DEBUG +to check NEWTOY() option strings (otherwise a bad option string makes +lib/args.c obviously segfault, but doesn't explain why).
+ +Added a "Why 0BSD?" section to license.html when submitting zero clause bsd +to SPDX (according to the pending license spreadsheet, it's been approved for +SPDX 2.2).
+ +The old list of commands needing cleanup but not in pending was +removed from toys/pending/README and instead the issues were added +as TODO comments in the individual commands.
+ +Bugfixes: +Fixed mount -a segfaulting without -O (reported by Janus Troelsen), +and made it try a "become rw" ioctl() on the block device before falling +back to mounting read only (because Android expects that). +Fixed printf -- and printf ---. Lots of tweaks to ls -l spacing with +different options. Make touch -d and -t actually set time when you don't +specify nanoseconds. +Fixed a subtle bug where recursive calls (toybox commands that run other +toybox commands) weren't resetting all their state. (This manifested as +a "no }" error from "find | xargs sed", but could cause other problems.) +And David Halls reported another sed bug trying to compile libiconv (which +left extra \ at the start of lines in a generated shell script, breaking +the build). Output an error message for "cat /mnt".
+ +Kylie McClain reported that mktemp broke when $TMPDIR was set to an empty +string (which is not the same as unset), that install/find didn't support +numeric uid/gids, and that sort -z affects both input and output. +Isabella Parakiss fixed a printf.c bug. +David Halls fixed bugs in install -D and find -exec. Samuel Holland +fixed unshare -r. Hyejin Kim fixed makedevs with a count of 1, fold -w +range checking, an error path in scripts/mkflags.c, added -i to dhcpd, +and stopped su from prompting the root user for the new user's password. +Jan Cybulski spotted wrong indentation when combining ls -s and -i with -C and +-x. José Bollo fixed stat %G. Sameer Pradhan fixed a bug in mkfifo -Z.
+ +Elliott Hughes asked for a default SIGPIPE handler to disable +the signal handler bionic's dynamic loader installs (yes really). Still not +100% sure what the correct behavior is there. (Posix is +(actively unhelpful, but at least they're taking +years to +make up their mind. Elliott also sent patches to fix a typo in +useradd.test, add missing arguments to error_exit() calls and clean up +printf() format strings, fix an off by one error in human_readable(), +fix dmesg -c error reporting, fix a segfault in comma_scan where the option +was the last item in optlist (triggered by mount -o ro,remount), fix +hwclock -w, made ifconfig print lowercase MAC addresses (it was bothering +him), and make terminal_size() read the right environment variable +(LINES, not ROWS). And he suggested the test suite notice high command exit +values (corresponding to segfault or other signals).
+ +People are apparently using toys/pending commands, despite the police tape +and flashing lights, so added louder warnings to toys/pending/README. +Elliott Hughes fixed various problems with tar, dd, more, and top. +Hyejin Kim cleaned up syslogd and dumpleases. Isaac Dunham added hotplug +support to mdev. Yeongdeok Suh added RFC-3315 ipv6 support to dhcpd.
+ +I rewrote ps.c from scratch (in pending), but it's not ready for real use +yet.
+ +Portability: +On the portability front Bernhard Rosenkranzer fixed a problem where the +menuconfig code wouldn't compile in C99 mode. (This led to me documenting +the craptacular nature of kconfig in a README, and the plan to replace it +sometime before 1.0.) Some extra flags to shut up overzealous llvm warnings +were added (and have to be probed for because gcc complains about +arguments it doesn't recognize even when they switch stuff _off_ using +a standard syntax). Don't depend on malloc(0) to return non-null in ls. +David Halls fixed some mac/ios portability issues, +implying somebody's built at least part of toybox on a mac.
+ +Added basename_r() to lib/lib.c because the posix semantics for basename() +are stupid but what the gnu guys did to it was appalling. +Turns out bionic already had a basename_r(), but posix still doesn't. +Fixed it up in portability.h, but this +could break more stuff in future. (Correct fix is to lobby posix to add it, +which would probably take about 15 years...)
+ +Infrastructure: +The build now checks $LDFLAGS for linker-only flags, and allows the strip +command to fail (binflt toolchains provide a strip that doesn't work). +Since time.c uses floating point, added TOYBOX_FLOAT dependency in config.
+ +There's a lib/lsm.h defining varous inline functions for linux +security modules stuff, if (lsm_enabled()) should turn into a compile-time +constant 0 and let code drop out when TOYBOX_LSM_NONE selected, but +testing against CFG_TOYBOX_LSM_NONE or derived symbols is still useful +becuase when it _is_ enabled the probe turns into a system call you +don't want to repeat too much.
+ +Switched a bunch of commands from signal() to xsignal(). Factored out +xgetgrnamid() and xgetpwnamid() into xwrap.c. Make time.c depend on +TOYBOX_FLOAT (since it always uses float so shouldn't be available on +build targets without even software float). Added readfileat() to lib/lib.c.
+ +The dirtree infrastructure now passes in full flags for the old symlink +field, and the new DIRTREE_SHUTUP flag disables warnings if a file vanishes +out from under you during traverse. New dirtree_start() wrapper to +create dirtree root with only two arguments.
+ +The not-curses infrastructure introduced by hexedit mostly moved to +lib/interestingtimes.c.
+ + +Asterisk: such when +Tim contacted me (my blog says a couple days before nov 13, 2011, I.E. +11/11/11 not some specific day 2 months later) to ask if I wanted to work +on a new project he was proposing called +BentoBox +(because I used to do busybox, he'd forgotten toybox existed +until I brought it up). And don't ask me what "focuses not on compatibility +with its GNU counterparts" means when CP_MORE adds 7 non-posix options +and toys/other has 84 commands in neither posix nor LSB. I think they're +struggling to explain the difference having dismissed "licensing" as being +the reason it started up again after a long hiatus? The reason I don't think +GNU is special is there are a half-dozen other independent +implementations of the same unix command tools out there (AT&T, +BSD, Coherent, Minix, plan 9, busybox, toybox, and several more analyzed in +the roadmap, and that's ignoring the implementations +written for DOS or in assembly over the years). But I do care what +Linux From Scratch expects, and if it's +calling mv -v +then I impelement mv -v +even if posix hasn't got +it. And I don't know why "gnu counterparts" would describe this when +util-linux isn't a gnu package, nor are info-zip, e2fsprogs, kmod, less, +procps, shadow, sysklogd, vim, zlib, sudo, dhcpcd... + +Since android and +tizen +and openembedded +and gentoo +and so on have all been using Georgi Chorbadzhiyski's git mirror rather +than the mercurial repository, I bit the bullet and switched the project's repo +to git. Georgi's +mirror is now pulling from that.
+ ++ +"A common mistake that people make when trying to design +something completely foolproof is to underestimate the ingenuity of +complete fools."
- The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.
Toybox 0.5.2 +(commit 1702) is out.
+ +New promoted commands: sed (finally fixed enough it builds Linux From +Scratch), printf (cleaned up and promoted), shred and +base64 (the Tizen guys wanted them), getenforce, setenforce, and chcon (android), +mix (promoted with fixes from Isaac Dunham), nsenter (from +Andy Lutomirski, merged into unshare).
+ +Elliott Hughes submited a bunch of patches to support Android (to +both toybox and Bionic libc, which he maintains). On toybox's end this +involved a lot of fixups to portability.[ch] and fixes to over a dozen +commands, plus several new ones. Other portability fixes included working +with buildroot's uclibc fork and building for nommu targets.
+ +The new "make change" target builds each toybox command as a standalone +binary. Rather a lot of commands that didn't build by themselves (mv depending +on cp and so on) were hit with a large rock until they built standalone. +This involved rewriting bits of option parsing, more elaborate dependency +generation, making each command have its own config +symbol and main() function (even when it's just a wrapper calling another +command's main()), and so on. Also, some commands can't be built standalone +at a conceptual level: "help" describes other enabled commands and "sh" +has a number of bulitin commands (cd, exit, set) that require the +multiplexer infrastructure, so "make change" filters them out.
+ +The mailing list's web archive is still screwed up. Dreamhost has +been trying to fix it since approximately September. There are +two +other less broken +archives, but neither has quite the same UI as mailman.
+ +Cynt Rynt sent in tests for ifconfig, +Robert Thompson taught factor to accept whitespace separated arguments, +Hyejin Kim pointed out that some of mktemp's longopts were attached to +the wrong short options, +Luis Felipe Strano Moraes fixed a wrong free() call in bootchartd in pending. +Patches from Ashwini Sharma to make "df /dev/node" work, prevent du from +looping endlessly following symlinks, and to make expr.c +(in pending) understand == and regex matches. (Speaking of expr, it gets +priority groupings wrong but the bug was actually in the posix spec's +HTML conversion. They fixed the posix spec upstream for us. Still need +to fix the expr code, but it's in pending for a reason...)
+ +Some commands grew new option flags, such as cp --remove-destination +and touch -h.
+ +The parallel build has better error reporting now. When toybox needs to +re-exec itself to regain suid root permissions and hasn't got the suid bit, +it now gives the right error message ("not root" instead of "no such command"). + +
Added a test to "mount" to not mount the same device/directory combination +over itself (the OS catches this for block devices, but not for tmpfs). +Make blkid distinguish ext3 from ext4. Added catv back into cat (because +the Android guys wanted it, and they have historical usage on their side, +so...). Handle nanoseconds in touch.
+ +Fixed a segfault when CP_MORE was disabled (the resulting option flag list +no longer defined -d but still had it in option groups at the end). +Workaround for glibc redefining dirname() and basename() to random non-posix +semantics because gnu. (They could have created dirname_r() but didn't want +to.)
+ +Fix an ifconfig test that was preventing assigning an ipv4 address to +interface aliases. Several cleanup passes on hwclock but not quite +promoted out of pending yet.
+ +
Fixed a wrong error message in rm (if you had a chmod 000 directory and +did rm -r on it without -f, after the prompt it would complain it was a +directory, which was not the problem).
+ +The gzip compression code now does "store only" output to stdout, for +what that's worth.
+ +Cleanup mountpoint and expand, and remove them from toys/pending/README +(a list of commands that predate the toys/pending directory but needed +another pass).
+ +Reworked the option parsing infrastructure so more commands build +standalone (via scripts/single.sh or "make change"). The option flag bit +values are no longer packed, it leaves spaces where currently disabled +flags go, and you can #define FORCE_FLAGS so disabled flags aren't zeroed. +This allows multiple commands to more easily share infrastructure, even if +your current flag context is for a disabled command (switched off in config), +you can force them to stay on and as long as the flags read the same right +to left they'll have the same values.
+ +We've started removing use of strncpy() because it's a hugely broken +standard C function: the length is the maximum length to _append_, not +the size of the destination buffer. It memsets the remaining space it didn't +copy ala "memset(dest+strlen(dest), 0, len);" so +if you think len is the size of dest you're guaranteed to stomp memory off the +end). And if it runs out of space it won't null terminate because reasons. +(Meanwhile sprintf("%*s", len, str) is counting wide characters in your current +locale, so if you set a locale other than "C" it will also go past your +allocated buffer size. Whoever is maintining the C library standards is really +bad at strings.) +Instead we have xstrncat() which will error_exit() if src+dest+1 doesn't +fit in the buffer. (Because randomly truncating input data isn't necessarily +an improvement.) And there's always xmprintf().
+ +Similarly, strtol() doesn't return an error indicator on overflow, +you have to clear and then check errno. So new xstrtol() that cares +about overflow.
+ +The bionic and musl guys agree faccessat(AT_SYMLINK_NOFOLLOW) is not +supported, so stop using it.
+ +Fixed toy_exec() to detect when argc is in optargs, so we don't +need a separate xexec_optargs().
+ +Dreamhost continues to be unable to make mailing list archives work, so +here's another +list archive with a less awkward interface than gmane.
+ +(Neither gives you the convenient historical monthly views of mailman, +but I still have hopes dreamhost will someday figure out what they're doing +wrong. They've only been trying since October. Last month they did a +hardware upgrade to fix a software problem, and the stale +data loads much faster now, so that's something.)
+ +Update (Feb 19): the archive started updating again, by discarding +all the pending data. So there are now _two_ giant holes in Dreamhost's +web archive, from Dec 15-Jan 3, and then another hole from Jan 16-Feb 18. +The relevant messages are in both of the other archives. Here's hoping +the chronic archive constipation problem won't happen a sixth time.
+ +Due to Dreamhost's ongoing +inability to make mailman +work reliably, I've added a link to a backup web archive at +gmane to the nav bar +on the left.
+ +You still subscribe to the list through +the first link.
+ +Update (January 27, 2015): they're still working on it.
+ ++ +"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.
Toybox 0.5.1 +(commit 1566) is out.
+ +It's an interim release, mostly bugfixes. There are several new commands, +but they're all in pending.
+ +Finally implemented sed, which is still in pending because although +it's feature complete according to posix, and even passes the parts of +Busybox's sed test suite that aren't explicitly testing for gnu bugs we +don't want to copy, it's not yet good enough to build Linux From Scratch. +(The ./configure stages use very long sed scripts. 20 commits worth of +implementation and debugging, just under 1000 lines of code, and there's +still more to do. We're definitely up to some of the "fiddly" commands now. +Did you know "echo hello | sed p - -" segfaults gnu sed in Ubuntu 12.04? +Yeah...)
+ +Talked with the Tizen developers to follow up on their desire to +make toybox a part of the base Tizen system, and got a list of commands +to add to the roadmap. The tizen todo list is:
+ ++ ++wget, sha256*, gzip, gunzip, bunzip2, rsync, zdiff*, +less, ar, arch, base64, csplit, dir, fmt, join, +nproc, shred, shuf, stdbuf, stty, test, tr, unexpand, +users, vdir, diff3, sdiff, dosfsck (fsck.vfat), awk, fdisk +
(Most of which was already on the todo list, but it helps prioritize.)
+ +Fixed md5sum and sha1sum on big endian systems (reported by James McMechan). +Andy Lutomirski fixed unshare's help text and option parsing, +and submitted nsenter (a tool to use setns(2)) to pending. +Isaac Dunham implemented acpi -ctV options, and spotted the bug that ls -d +was inappropraitely following command line symlinks without -H or -L (it +should act like ls -l does), and ls -F handles symlinks wrong too. +Lukasz Szpakowski sent in two bugfixes to tail.c. Cynt Rynt spotted an +unnecessary assignment in lib/password.c.
+ +Ashwini Sharma's team was as busy as usual, submitting tr, crontab, and +ipcrm, and hwclock to pending, more features to the pending ip.c, and a +pile of bugfixes (to chgrp, killall, ifconfig, insmod, +losetup, comm, cp, id, xwrap, netcat, modprobe, nohup...) mostly found by +static analysis. (These fixes are mostly to seldom-used codepaths like the +TOYBOX_FREE config option, but test coverage is always appreciated.) Ashwini +also suggested upgrading ln -f to leave the original target alone if link +creation fails, and reported that mv -f and -i weren't implemented (now fixed).
+ +New config option: TOYBOX_NORECURSE prevents xexec() from making internal +function calls (for nommu systems with a finite stack).
+ +The "toybox" multiplexer command no longer adds a trailing space to each +line of command names, so things like "./toybox | tr ' \n' '|'" to create +a grep pattern snippet are easier to do. (Why you'd want to is your business, +but the output is tidier now.)
+ +Isaac Dunham added Android support to portability.h, including compile +probes for functions missing from bionic-libc, and annotated the commands that +use those functions. We haven't really tested building against bionic, +but in theory it's possible now.
+ +Running the test suite now color codes the PASS/SKIP/FAIL notifications +if output is to a tty. (And in case you missed it last time, VERBOSE=fail +to stop at the first failure is really useful.)
+ +In loopfiles_rw() use O_CLOEXEC instead of O_RDONLY to request the loop +function close filehandles for us. (Otherwise the callback function must +close each supplied filehandle itself.)
+ +The printf-style escape parsing ("\n" and friends) got factored out into +a new unescape() function.
+ ++ +"There is an art, it says, or rather, a knack to flying. +The knack lies in learning how to throw yourself at the ground and miss... +Clearly, it is this second part, the missing, which presents the +difficulties." - The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.
Toybox 0.5.0 +(commit 1512) is out.
+ +The new commands are find, install, factor, and mount. Promoted commands +(cleaned up and moved out of "pending") are lspci, inotifyd, and blockdev.
+ +cp now implements -HL and -F to force delete of pending files, cpio now +ignores -m and implements -p, ls -C now has utf8 support (using wcwidth +instead of strlen), and umount got a number of upgrades involving +looking things up in /proc/mounts. Other minor cleanups happend to +cut, touch, free, and id.
+ +In pending: Bradley Controy submitted mix (adjusts OSS sound volume). Ashwini +Sharma submitted diff, userdel, blockdev, ipcs, and crond, upgraded +fdisk, fsck, and ftpget, and ran a static analyzer on a lot of other code. +Partial cleanup was done to useradd, userdel, groupadd, and groupdel.
+ +Parallel builds
+ +The build now takes advantage of SMP, autodetecting the number of +processors. (Export the environment variable CPUS to pick a specific number.) +Other build changes: split out $LDOPTIMIZE because old compilers complain +about linker options passed with -c, and the entire "generated" directory now +gets deleted by clean (the README that was in there got merged into code.html).
+ +Standalone builds
+ +The standalone build infrastructure (scripts/single.sh) got upgraded to +build more commands as standalone executables. In make.sh the source file +selection uses a regex to find the source files with the NEWTOY/OLDTOY macro +for the command. It enables each command's +sub-options (so CP has CP_MORE), enables I18N and FLOAT support to build +full-featured commands, and includes --help text (at least when +the command doesn't use another command's help). The OLDTOY() macro +now produces (redundant) function prototypes so you can build an OLDTOY +without the NEWTOY
+ +It doesn't quite have complete coverage yet, the defconfig entries that +aren't building standalone yet are:
+ ++ +chown, egrep, fgrep, fstype, halt, mv, nc, poweroff, unix2dos, +whoami
The main reason for standalone build failures is NEWTOY() or OLDTOY() +entries that don't have their own config symbol. Another problem is entries +that depend on another entry in kconfig, usually because common infrastructure +is using one command's flags (which the other commands copy): if that command +is disabled, the FLAG macros become 0 so dead code elimination can remove the +code. It's possible +to untangle this, but a bit awkward. (It boils down to conflicting +design goals in the two contexts.)
+ +Standalone builds are used by the test suite when testing individual +commands. + +
Snapshot builds
+ +A new addition to the "generated" directory is generated/build.sh +containing a single compiler command line to build toybox in its current +configuration. Combined with the generated/*.{h,sh} files from an +exisiting build, this may let you build on a new system that hasn't quite +got enough OS bits working to run a full configureand make.
+ +Library code: xcreate/xopen now O_CLOEXEC by default to avoid leaking +filehandles to child processes. DIRTREE_COMEAGAIN's second callback is now +done with the directory filehandle still open (new dir->again variable added +to distinguish first from second callback, and requesting DIRTREE_RECURSE now +requires passing in the specific macro value, not just a true/false). +Use daemon() out of libc instead of hand-rolled daemonize() in various +pending commands. string_to_mode() now passes through type bits so you can +use it to more easily modify a file's existing mode. +Split xpopen() into xpopen_both(), xopen(), and xrun() depending on whether +we want to redirect both, one, or neither of stdin/stdout.
+ +Bugfixes: Better error message when TOYBOX_SUID option can't drop priviliges +(which happens when you suid something _other_ than root). +The old pending version of nbd_client.c wasn't deleted when the +command was promoted (and the build would break if both were enabled), +toy_exec() sometimes needs to re-exec from $PATH rather than recurse +internally (to gain dropped root permissions or limit stack depth), +always call setlocale() when I18N is enabled to switch it back _off_ when +we run commands that expect sscanf("%n") to return bytes, +dirtree() had a memory leak in an error path, patch.c had some bugs in +error paths (didn't report problem clearly). Ashwini Sharma spotted an +option parsing bug where [-abc] would forget _all_ command line arguments +saved in the GLOBALS() block (not just the ones for options being switched +off), plus various minor fixes to nbd_client and cpio. +Lukasz Szpakowski fixed rm -f on a broken symlink (failed), and killall +with no arguments (segfaulted).
+ +Portability
+ +A somewhat fiddly fix to rm -rf (which needs to chmod directories to u+rwx +to descend into them) which hit a musl bug in faccessat() which the musl +maintainer refuses to fix. (He literally wants the man page changed +instead, despite other libcs working.) Added an #ifdef __MUSL__ section +to portability.h with a workaround, you may need CFLAGS=-D__MUSL__ in your +build if your musl build's features.h doesn't #define that. (I may do +a different workaround in future, but sometimes you've just got to make +it work so you can ship. Also, toybox grep with multiple patterns +requires a patch +to musl's regex engine, which applies to 1.1.4 but not to the current +musl source control.)
+ +More portability.h fixes for uClibc too. (I don't expect that to ever have +another release, so locally patching around posix-2008 violations is silly).
+ +Change to username filtering
+ +Posix recommends the username creation logic filter usernames to a small +allowed set of characters (which even Red Hat breaks by explicitly allowing +"$" at the end), but this prevents UTF-8 usernames. Posix' stated logic +is to allow filesystems to create the user's home directory, but Linux +filesystems can accept any character but NUL and "/". The only characters +we actually _need_ to filter out are ":" (field separator in passwd), +newline (line separator in passwd), and "/" (directory separator in +filesystem).
+ +Web pages updated: cleanup.html documents more cleanup, code.html +documents more code, and about.html now capitalizes "toybox" consistently +(it's just a word, capitalize at start of sentence).
+ +The pending/README file now lists commands that needed review/cleanup +before the pending directory was added.
+ +Moved out of scripts/test into top level "tests" directory, and the +testing.sh script is now in scripts rather than mixed into the *.test files.
+ +Johan Bergström requested VERBOSE=fail to make tests (telling it to +stop at the first failure), and spotted a build bug where using gnu +sort on the host broke in non-C locales.
+ +Divya Kothari submitted tests for chmod, link, tar, bzcat, xzcat, zcat, +and hostname. (And more, but that's all that's merged so far.)
+ ++ +"This planet has - or rather had - a problem, which was this: +most of the people living on it were unhappy for pretty much of the time. Many +solutions were suggested for this problem, but most of these were largely +concerned with the movement of small green pieces of paper, which was odd +because on the whole it wasn't the small green pieces of paper that were +unhappy." - The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.
Toybox 0.4.9 (commit 1385) is out.
+ +New commands added to pending include: +lsattr, chattr, inotifyd, rfkill, sulogin, strings, makedevs, +killall5, and tar from Ashwini Sharma, arp from Kyungwan Han, +sysctl by Bilal Qureshi, partprobe from Bertold Van den Bergh, +host from Rich felker, and I did nbd-client and the first 2/3 of mount.
+ +Finished cleanups (commands promoted out of pending): +sysctl, rfkill, strings, mkpasswd, makedevs, partprobe, killall5, +fallocate, and nbd-client.
+ +(Along the way partial cleanups got made to: last, fold, lspci, ps, +bootchartd, init, fsck, telnetd, telnet, vconfig, toysh, iconv, useradd, +login, host, openvt, deallocvt, getty, tftpd, and modprobe. But there's +still more to do on all of those.)
+ +This time around the static binaries are linked against +musl instead of uClibc. (That's why there's no sparc version, musl doesn't +support that target yet.)
+ +Documentation:
+ +The help text parser expects lower case "usage:" lines with +a blank line after them, so go through and regularize those. Expand the +"coding style" section in the docs and move it to design.html. (Not a show +stopper for incoming +contributions, just an explanation of some of the things I'll do to them +during cleanup.) The help text for the "toybox" command now includes +the shell script snippet to install symlinks to the toybox binary.
+ +The cleanup page now has descriptions for the +full ifconfig cleanup series, among others.
+ +The new toys/examples directory contains hello.c and skeleton.c. The first is +a simple hello world program in toybox style, the second is a much more +elaborate example program using showing how to use the command line option +parsing and how to provide multiple commands in the same C file.
+ +Fixes:
+ +Fix od bug reported by Samuel Holland ("od -v -b" was appending the default +output type even though an output type was specified). Ashwini Sharma reported +bugs where readfile() was incorrectly freeing its buffer, and where toy_init() +was zeroing the wrong data because the field it was using to measure (rebound) +had moved (when I moved it back I added a comment why the field needs to be +there), fixed a segfault in the dhcp client, and made a 0 length read at +the start of password entry count as EOF. Make the "we are not root" test +in the init code show the help text. Posix implies that fflush() can return +success even when the stream's error bit is set, so call both fflush() and +ferror() from xprintf().
+ +Isaac Dunham pointed out that bloatcheck couldn't deal with diff +implementations that only implement "unified diff" format, and that some +diff implementations can't handle nonseekable input (I.E. reading from +a pipe). Bugfix so "help -a" works again. Option parsing on nohup now stops +at first nonoption argument. Fix segfault in "which" if PATH wasn't set, +which was actually a bug in lib function find_in_path(). Made rm -rf of +chmod 000 directories actually remove them.
+ +The build now passes the same $CFLAGS to the library probe as the final +build, because arch linux is so broken it provides different sets of +libraries for static and dynamic linking.
+ +It turns out sprintf("%.123s", str) is counting characters, not bytes, +so globally enabling locale support opens stack smashing vulnerabilities. +So there's a new TOYFLAGS_LOCALE you set in toyflags when you want the +setup code to setlocale().
+ +Upgrades:
+ +Isaac Dunham extended cpio to archive unreadable empty files, and I taught it +to set uid/gid and timestamp when extracting archives. Isaac also +added tests for cpio, link, and du, added lspci -i, made the pci database +parsing skip # comment lines, merged logname and whoami into id.
+ +Daniel Verkamp sped up md5sum about 30% with some loop unrolling, making +it actually smaller in the process. I added -b flags to md5sum and sha1sum +for "brief" output that's just the hash with no filename. (I'm aware other +implementations use that for MSDOS "binary" mode, and don't care.)
+ +When building standalone commands (scripts/singleconfig.sh commandname), +the build now switches on all the sub-options of the command so we get +a standalone version with all the bells and whistles enabled.
+ +Add -ds flags to date and document +FORMAT escapes. Add the shell NOP +command ":" as an alias for true (for toysh).
+ +Add uClibc probe for iconv() and fallocate. (The fact it didn't always +build against uClibc is why fallocate wasn't enabled in defconfig before.)
+ +The umount command now does an losetup -d on the device by default, so +we don't leak loopback devices. Bugfix to losetup so "losetup /dev/loop0 +filename" actually works again.
+ +Divya Kothari sent in test suite entries for ls, ln, rm, mv, printf, dd, +and renice. Then a second round for lsattr/chattr, mount, chmod, pgrep/pkill, +groupadd, groupdel, and useradd. Several of these uncovered bugs, still +working to fix them.
+ +There are now free() functions for the predefined llist types and a +dlist_terminate() function to break doubly linked lists. The new +generic_signal() handler either sets "toys.signal" or writes a byte +to toys.signalfd with the signal number if signalfd isn't -1 (which it's +initialized to in toy_init).
+ +The option parsing logic can now detect when a double fits in a long and +use the more precise type for floating point arguments (the FLOAT macro +contains the type used). The human_readable() function now just outputs +decimal kilo/mega/gigabytes (so when du -u says 5.0G it means 5.0 billion +bytes). The build infrastructure now notices duplicate commands (so if you +cp toys/pending/command.c toys/other/command.c and forget to delete the +first one, the build break is now more informative).
+ ++ +And to this end they built themselves a stupendous supercomputer +which was so amazingly intelligent that even before the data banks +had been connected up it had started from "I think therefore I am" and got as +far as the existence of rice pudding and income tax before anyone managed to +turn it off. - The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.
Toybox 0.4.8 is based on +commit 1262. And +about time too.
+ +The big news is that the build no longer needs python to generate help.h, +that's now done in C. The help text generation is also collating help text +from multiple options, merging command line option blocks and usage: lines. +There's even a new help web page.
+ +New commands: Ifconfig, cpio, and su were cleaned up the rest of the +way and promoted out of pending. That saga is mostly explained on the +cleanup page. Vivek Bhagat's freeramdisk, +Isaac Dunham's fsfreeze, and Felix Janda's iconv are also new.
+ +In pending: +Ashwini Sharma's team submitted tcpsvd, udpsvd, telnet, telnetd, last, more, +groupdel/delgroup, arping, brctl, ftpget, ftpput, printf, reset, and added +ipv6 support to traceroute. Kyungwan Han's team submitted modprobe and getty. +Vivek Bhagat submitted openvt and deacllocvt. Samuel Holland submitted fold. +I wrote a new inflate (zip/zlib/gzip decompression) implementation in +compress.c, and still need to do a corresponding deflate (compression-side) +and plug them into gzip and zip and so on. (Right now it does zcat.)
+ +Several commands (vmstat, login, du, vconfig, mountpoint, free, chroot, +cut, touch, modinfo, expand) predate the "pending" directory, and are thus +in other directories but still need cleanup. Of these, vmstat got some +work this time (which would be much easier other vmstat implementations +documented what their output actually meant).
+ +Upgrades: Ifconfig grew /prefix netmask support (ala 1.2.3.4/24). Grep now has -zZ to +handle null terminated data, cksum grew -H for hex output. Upgraded od so the +fields align better when producing multiple output types. Help has -a and -h +options (all commands, html output). +Bugfix to blkid building for a 32 bit target. The date command can actually +set dates now. The O_NOFOLLOW compile time probe didn't work with cross +compiling, so it's back to an #ifdef test in portability.h. Nathan McSween +sent in a bugfix to od and a portability fix in the common library code. +Ashwini Sharma spotted a bug in pidof -o, and added verbose (-v) options +to mkdir and ln, and suggested killall should have an -s option and +allow -l to take zero arguments. Ashwini Sharma and Felix Janda upgraded +tftpd. Fixed dumpleases still using toynet.h after +that was removed. Corrected killall return code and error reporting. +Isacc Dunham fixed bugs all over the tree, did cleanup on a bunch of +pending commands (getty, ftpget, init, openvt, modprobe...), and clarified +find's help text. Tom Sparrow ran three different static analyzers on +the code, which resulted in a few cleanups. The peek()/poke() functions +now use "volatile" to prevent broken compiler "optimizations" to do with +aliasing.
+ +Build stuff: Each FOR_xxxx macro now has a complementary CLEANUP_xxxx macro, so you +can put multiple commands with different command line options in the same +.c file, so they can share infrastructure outside of lib. (This let the +bunzip logic move out of lib into bzcat.c.) See XXX for example. +i +
The headers #included in toys.h are now grouped by standard, and headers +not listed in Posix or LSB were moved to portability.h. The old xregcomp.h +was folded into lib.h because it's posix (and supporting oddball uClibc +configurations isn't as important as it once was).
+ +Regression tested against Ubuntu 8.04 to fix up bit-rot in defconfig +build on older systems. (We depend on Posix-2008, but not necessarily +the absolute latest build environment.)
+ +In lib: lib/xwrap.c added xgetpwnam(), xchroot(), and lib/lib.c now has names_to_pid(). +xsetuid() was replaced with xsetuser() which takes a struct passwd +and sets both gid and uid, mkpathat() got factored out into a library command, +get_int_value() became atolx_range(), and +xmsprintf() is now just xmprintf(). The bunzip2 logic moved from lib into +bzcat.c.
+ +Documentation: new help page with the +help text for all the defconfig commands, using the new help -ah output. +The source code walkthrough now says more about +#including header files, and how the generated/* directory works. The +design page has some new paragraphs about trading +of different kinds of simplicity, and why comments aren't a substitute for +good code. The README no longer trails off into obvious unfinished confusion +at the end. Each page on the website should now have its own title.
+ ++ +"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." - +The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.
Toybox 0.4.7 is based on +commit 1122.
+ +New commands: Brad Conroy submitted blkid. Elie De Brauwer submitted +reboot, halt, and poweroff. Strake's nl got cleaned up and promoted from +pending to posix. In addition, the existing chvt and vconfig got some +cleanup.
+ +That said, I haven't nearly kept up with the flood of new commands going +into pending: Ashwini Sharma's team submitted +dd, dumpleases, traceroute, top, useradd, groupadd, mkpasswd, tftpd, and +an fsck wrapper (with no filesystem drivers yet). Isaac Dunham sent in cpio.
+ +Bugfixes: Jeroen van Rijn added a user count to uptime. Elie De Brauwer +added -e to watch, removed a memory leak, and fixed a terminal size problem. +William Haddon made xargs call its command line once even with blank input +(the standard is vague, but builds expect it), and fixed an off by one bug +where grep didn't malloc enough space with -E (leading to a segfault). +I fixed a glitch in bunzip2 (same one as went into busybox since they're using +the code I wrote), in od to fix -t co, -J, and -c options. Add uname -o as a +synonym for -s. Build fix to never use $CC without prefixing it with +$CROSS_COMPILE (since $HOSTCC could be different). Anca Emanuel spotted +a typo in the web page.
+ +The compile-time command line option parsing got rewritten (ported from +bash to C), which should speed up builds a bit and allow code controlled by +--longopts to drop out properly when disabled in the configuration. Terminal +querying got refactored. Patch's -x option is now more informative (a +debug thing if you're trying to figure out why a patch didn't apply). +The "toynet.h" file got folded into toys.h since musl supports it and +micromanging uClibc options isn't very interesting anymore. The test suite +now uses scripts/single.sh when testing a single command.
+ ++ +"Think of a number," said the computer, "any number." +Arthur told the computer the telephone number of King's Cross railway +station passenger inquiries, on the grounds that it must have some function, +and this might turn out to be it. - The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
+
Toybox 0.4.6 is based on +commit 1068.
+ +This release adds +several new commands: Felix Janda wrote paste and fallocate, Kyungwan Han +submitted eject, Strake contributed grep, Ashwini Sharma added pmap (and +a testsuite entry for grep), Lukasz Skalski sent pwdx, Isaac Dunham posted +acpi, and I did timeout and umount.
+ +The ls command now has a --color=auto option (suggested by Rich Felker). +The multiplexer now has a --help option so you can say "./toybox --help blah" +instead of using the built-in "help" command. (Which is a shell built-in. +Try it on your command line, it's like man for shell builtins. But a certain +other project has conditioned people to expect --help, so...) I forget who +heehooman at gmail is but they pointed out unshare needed PID and UID +namespace support.
+ +A lot of new commands in toys/pending, to the point the next release should +probably just focus on cleanup and review of this backlog. We've got klogd, +dhcp, dhcpd, watch, route, and ps from +Ashwini Sharma (and an fsck wrapper but no fsck.fstype engines yet), +syslogd, pgrep, and pkill from Madhur Verma, netstat by Ranjan Kumar, +test by Felix Janda, lspci by Isaac Dunham, nl, su, and renice by strake (I.E. +M. Farkas-Dyck), and sysvinit by Kyungwan Han.
+ +Some cleanup work on existing pending commands that aren't +ready to promote yet: I did a few more rounds on ifconfig +and Isaac Dunham's did several cleanups to xzcat, Felix Janda cleaned up +logger and syslogd...
+ +Also some cleanup work on commands that predate the pending directory, +but weren't quite polished when they went in, most prominently du, +expand, and touch.
+ +The new scripts/single.sh builds a standalone command without the +multiplexer, although not all commands can be built that way yet (NEWTOY yes, +OLDTOY no) and the space savings aren't anything to write home about. (If a +command needs the option parsing logic at all, it needs all of it.) If +you're curious, you can do:
+ ++ ++make defconfig +make +mkdir singles +for i in $(./toybox) +do + echo $i + PREFIX=singles/ scripts/single.sh $i || break +done ++(And then wait a long time and watch almost half the builds fail.)
+
There is now libbuf analogous to toybuf, another global 4k buffer this +time for use by lib/ code instead of command code.
+ +The lib directory got split up a bit, lib/pending.c contains functions +not yet used by anything outside of toys/pending/*, and lib/xwrap.c contains +functions that wrap other functions and handle failures (via error_exit). +This leaves lib/lib.c containing actual new functions.
+ +General improvements and bug fixes to argument parsing. The [-abc] exclude +logic should now clear arguments slots when disabling options. Bare --longopts +should work now and be able to report errors using their name, the new ; +option allows optional arguments to longopts only suppliable with = (I.E. +--color and --color=auto but not --color auto).
+ +I'm gradually weaning the code off of itoa()/utoa() because sprintf +does this already. In this case "simple" probably means "let libc do it +for us".
+ +Rewrote for_each_pid_with_name_in() and renamed it to just names_to_pid(). +It shouldn't get confused trying to compare absolute and relative paths quite +so much anymore.
+ +lib/llist.c grew a new dlist_pop() function for removing a doubly +linked list entry while maintaining a circular list; tail and patch are +using it now.
+ +The musl guys suggested a new optimization flag +(-fno-asynchronous-unwind-tables) +that shaves about 10% off the binary size by removing a C++ism that crept +into gcc's idea of C. While I don't normally try to micromanage the compiler, +"-fstop-being-stupid" is a thing you have to hit gcc with from time to time.
+ +Felix Janda and I did a largeish rewrite of tail to +finally make it work right (we think). Still need to implement tail -f +someday (the tricky bit is making -f follow multiple files at once). +Felix also reported a bug in xpidfile.
+ +Juhani Haverinen pointed out that +python 3 doesn't work with config2help.py, so the detection logic looks +for python2 (until I get around to rewriting that in C). Elie De Brauwer +then fixed our first attempt at this, and also fixed uname's help string.
+ +Ashwini Sharma +pointed out the build was making a FLAG_ macro for " " which broke some +configurations. (That's a control character, not a command line option.)
+ +Jacek Bukarewicz pointed out a bug in chdir permission handling, and +a way to make env segfault. Both should be fixed now.
+ +The new function xexec_optargs() +replaces calls to xexec(toys.optargs) to avoid freeing and reusing optargs +during option parsing screwing stuff up (such as netcat's exec mode).
+ +The stat command's %a output was padded with leading zeroes, which +didn't match anybody else's behavior and thus made the test suite hiccup +between TEST_HOST and testing toybox. (If you go "TEST_HOST=1 scripts/test.sh +command" it sanity checks the tests against the host implementation.)
+ +Last release, "mkdir sub/sub && chmod 007 sub/sub && rm -rf sub" didn't +delete sub and didn't exit with an error either. Neither was correct, rm +should now be fixed.
+ +Georgi Chorbadzhiyski maintains a git +mirror of the repository on github, automatically updated from the +mercurial every 6 hours. The mirror is read only, but you can generate patches +against it and post them to the list.
+ ++ +"Time is an illusion. Lunchtime doubly so." "Very deep. You +should send that in to the Reader's Digest. They've got a page for people +like you." - +The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.
Toybox 0.4.5 is based on +commit 941. It adds +uuencode and uudecode from Erich Plondke, and enables Luis Morales' "who" by +default. Felix Janda and I cleaned up last year's "stat" submission and +enabled it. Ivo van Poorten added "groups". +Andre Renaud added "lsusb". I implemented "split", "pivot_root", and "mv". +
+ +The "help" command is implemented differently now (lib/help.c) and +each command can now understand --help (including both "toybox --help" +and "toybox --help command" in the multiplexer).
+ +The "pending" directory has several commands (find, xzcat, nbd-client, +logger, expr) which work but are not enabled by default pending further cleanup. +Ifconfig is enabled, but still in pending because it's only 2/3 cleaned up. +(It's an awkward halfway state but I'm not holding up the release for it.)
+ +I'm documenting the cleanups to teach +more people to do it, but the writeups aren't caught up yet. The +roadmap also got updated a bit with further analysis +of other projects, and the README and about pages got updated.
+ +Fixed _another_ "ls -C" segfault when terminal size can't be detected, +condensed the ls help text to fit on one page, implented --color, and taught +-l to print the major, minor numbers when showing block/char devices. +Argument parsing now handles "--" properly (to end option checking), +and the infrastructure can now handle bare --longopts that have no +corresponding short option (both were implemented before but didn't work). +Fixed an old bug in "patch", chmod grew -f, who grew -a. Isaac Dunham +fixed "-" vs "_" handling in modinfo, added a "firmware" output +field, added -b and -k support, and taught it that the ".ko" extension means +to look for the file at the specified path instead of under /lib. Felix Janda +moved file permission display code to lib so ls and +stat could share it. Ashwini Sharma spotted a bug in xabspath when the +last path component exists but we haven't got permissions to open it +(ala readlink -f /dev/sda as a normal user). +
+ +In the build infrastructure, scripts/findglobals.sh finds leaked global +variables. (Leaked means they aren't part of the global union: Other than glibc +debris, toybox should define "this", "toy_list", "toybuf", and "toys", and +that's it; the rest add memory footprint to every command for the benefit of +just one command; use GLOBALS() to stick 'em in the union.) Static linking +against libraries other than the host's libc now applies to feature probes +for unshare and such. Neuter stupid internationalization support that makes +various host "sort" commands put things in an order other than alphabetical +(breaking the multiplexer's binary search on command names). + +
You should now be able to build from a source control snapshot on a build +system that hasn't got python: if you disable CONFIG_TOYBOX_HELP. (The +release tarballs ship generated/help.h, but it's not in source control. +Eventually I should rewrite that python script in C.)
+ + +LICENSE TWEAK: After discussion on the mailing list the "2 clause +BSD" license got slightly simplified so the first +paragraph now says:
+ ++ +Permission to use, copy, modify, and/or distribute this +software for any purpose with or without fee is hereby granted.
It used to continue "provided that the above copyright notice and this +permission notice appear in all copies", but A) what's the point? B) does "all +copies" mean binaries, or just source code, or what? C) lots of projects +that consider BSD and GPL compatible have files with +both license notices on them (sometimes at opposite ends of the file to make the conflict +less obvious) because "all copies must include this function" would violate +the GPL but "all copies must include this magic text blob" somehow don't?
+ +I don't want to have to care about this anymore. The tweaked version is more +or less public domain with a liability disclaimer, but we're still calling it +BSD (sometimes "0 clause BSD") to avoid explaining.
+ +Video of my ELC talk +"Why is Toybox?" +is up on youtube. Related materials include the +talk outline and an +android self-hosting writeup.
+ +[Updated June 4] The following links jump to specific topics in the video. (Sorry about +the ads, it's The Linux Foundation.)
+ ++ +"Ford, you're turning into a penguin. Stop it." - +The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.
Toybox 0.4.4 is based on +commit 813, adding +the "time" and "readahead" commands, plus some bugfixes.
+ +The "cp" command now implements the -s symlink option, plus bugfixes +getting various corner cases right as used in actual package builds. +"id -Gn root" should now print root's groups +instead of the current user's. Several build fixes so toybox builds under +Ubuntu 8.04 again (which is about as old a build environment as you +can expect to find posix-2008 features in).
+ +Unfinished commands have generally been moved to "toys/pending". +Everything else should "default y" to participate in make defconfig. +Several of those pending commands got some basic cleanup so allyesconfig +should at least compile (although defconfig is still what's useful).
+ +Significant roadmap updates, checking several other multicall binaries +(klibc, sash, sbase, s6...) to see what commands they include.
+ ++ +This must be Thursday. I never could get the hang of Thursdays. - The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.
Toybox 0.4.3 is based on +commit 793. There +are now exactly 100 commands in defconfig (of a little over 220 on the +todo list).
+ +Elie De Brauwer added the rev command, cleaned up tac, implemented the -s +and -f flags for seq, added -v and -i to killall (and fixed killall not to +kill itself before finishing its pid list), and added to the test suite. +Felix Janda added -m to mkdir, pwd -L and -P, and more test suite entries.
+ +Rob Landley added the losetup command, and fixed the existing ls, cp, and +readlink commands. The segfault in ls +happened when it couldn't determine the screen size (last release changed the +default to -C and a screen size of 0 made column view unhappy), and cp got an +extensive rewrite bringing it up to date with the dirtree changes and fixing +a number of things it never did right in the first place. The xabspath() +code in the library now handles a symlink after ".." properly (and the test +suite checks for it).
+ +Infrastructure-wise the code is better about automatically setting the +error return code properly. Now error_msg() sets the exit code to 1 if it's +still defaulting to 0, and the global exit path does a fflush(NULL) with error +bit check rather than trying to be quite so granular about flushing. (That +means if we use printf() instead of xprintf() it still exits with the right +error code, it just doesn't end the program early on an output error.) +Minor bugfix so TOYBOX_DEBUG +doesn't always warn about the lack of suid bit when toybox is built with +at least one STAYROOT command. Bugfix for the option [grouping] logic +(and then further fixes to the error reporting pointed out by Ashwini Sharma). +dirtree_handle_callback() now has a prefix like the rest of the dirtree +functions. A lot of stuff doing manual path handling was switched to using +libc basename() (including, embarassingly, the basename command), which means +it now correctly detects "/trailing/slash/" which the previous code didn't.
+ +Also, last release included some accidentally checked in debug code that +disabled compiler optimization, so the binary size bloated a bit. It's back +to -Os by default now.
+ ++ +"The major difference between a thing that might go wrong and a +thing that cannot possibly go wrong is that when a thing that cannot possibly +go wrong goes wrong it usually turns out to be impossible to get at or repair." +
- The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.
Toybox 0.4.2 is based on +commit 749 and is +just a resync. Linux 3.7 came out, meaning it's time to do an Aboriginal +Linux release, and that should use a stable version of toybox. So here's +a new stable version.
+ +The new commands are cut (from Jason Kyungwan Han), touch +(from Choubey Ji), expand (from Jonathan Clairembault, and he fixed a +bug in login), and rm (from Rob Landley). Felix Janda added UTF-8 +support infrastructure (for non-ascii character sets) with a config option. +Elie De Brauwer added tests for cat and sha1sum, and -so options to pidof. +The "ls" command defaults to -C (column view) now, and "readlink" now supports +-fenq.
+ +Portability work: toybox should now build against the musl C library, +and against older glibc versions (circa 2008, much before that and kernel +features we depend on start to drop out).
+ +The whole codebase got reindented from "one tab" to "two spaces" per +level. The option parsing logic now understands [groups] of commands (when more +than one in a group is selected it can switch the others off, or error out, +or other things). The error_exit() infrastructure can now longjmp back to an +earlier point instead of exiting. Each toys/* directory now has a README, +the first line of which is the fancy name menuconfig uses for the directory +(so no more hardwired directory list in scripts/genconfig.sh).
+ +Fixed a filehandle leak in getmountlist(). +Pass parent pointer to dirtree_add_node() so it can give error messages with +full path. The yesno() function now always reads from stdin and writes to +stderr (we can retry tty checking complexity once we've got commands needing +it).
+ +The open group broke their website so the +old links to POSIX 2008 +now need to start with +pubs. Some of the links in the tree have been updated, others haven't while +I wait to see if their webmaster notices and fixes it.
+ +(I note that the current rm implementation is not technically posix compliant +because the standard requires infinite recursion depth and the current +implementation uses one filehandle per level. I can add a config option +to do it Posix's way, which is more brittle and needs extra security checks, +but am waiting for somebody to complain first. The default "ulimit -n" is 1024 +filehandles, so drilling down over 1000 nested subdirectories).
+ +@@ -65,7 +2037,7 @@ a separate oldnews page. back now. -"Rule Six: The winning team shall be the first team that wins." - The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.
@@ -90,7 +2062,7 @@ corresponding executable bit wasn't set, and worked around a longstanding glibc bug where static linking prevents stdout from automatically flushing pending output on exit. -"Ford", Arthur said. "There's an infinite number of monkeys out here who want to talk to us about this script for Hamlet they've worked out." - The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.
"For a moment, nothing happened. Then, after a second or so, nothing continued to happen." - The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.
Toybox 0.3.1 is based on commit @@ -106,7 +2078,7 @@ it is. The roadmap and documentation are a bit behind, and I've got ~40 pending submissions to review. I need to catch up...
-"For instance, on the planet Earth, man had always assumed that he was more intelligent than dolphins because he had achieved so much - the wheel, New York, wars and so on - whilst all the dolphins had ever done was @@ -171,7 +2143,7 @@ yet, but if I wait until everything works we won't have a release before 1.0, so here's a checkpoint.)
-
March 3, 2012 +March 3, 2012
"They went unnoticed at Goonhilly, passed over Cape Canaveral without a blip, and Woomera and Jodrell Bank looked straight through them. @@ -211,7 +2183,7 @@ dirname, unshare, and various infrastructure tweaks, but it took me 3 months and those guys did their stuff in a week or so.)
-
February 12, 2012 +February 12, 2012
"for though it has many omissions and contains much that is apocryphal, or at least wildly inaccurate, it scores over the older, more pedestrian work in two @@ -228,7 +2200,8 @@ patches pending on the mailing list I need to review and merge.
More to come...
-November 15, 2011 - Back from the dead, Toybox is now under a 2 +
November 15, 2011
+- Back from the dead, Toybox is now under a 2 clause BSD license, and aiming to become the default command line implementation of Android systems everywhere.