[BusyBox] Upcoming changes....

Pavel Roskin proski at gnu.org
Fri Jun 30 18:30:12 UTC 2000


Hello, Erik!

> 1) struct BB_applet in internal.h will be getting a few new members:
> 	int min_args;
> 	int max_args;

Is it about all arguments or about all non-option arguments? I'm afraid
that only few apps will really benefit (i.e. eliminate code) from the
former.

> 	char* help_sting;

Ok

> 2) busybox_main() will now check for if the right number of options
>     were passed in or not, and if needed print s suitable error msg.

Ok (but see the question above)

> 3) busybox_main() will now handle "--help" and "--version".

Great!

> 4) busybox_main() will now define a global variable that will define
>     the name of the app that was called.

Ok

> 5) All usage/help strings will be moved to a common file (perhaps
>     helpstrings.c).  This will have the side effect of helping 
>     out any future attempts at i18n.

Ok

> 6) All apps will migrate to using getopt for option parsing.  Those
>     that need to handle long options (i.e. tar, rm, ln) will use
>     getopt to match "-" and then use strcmps and needed.

Consider GNU getopt. More apps may need it / benefit from it.

> 7) All apps will have any now-redundant argument bounds checking
>     removed.

I'm afraid it's not going to be a big win.

> 8) All printed text strings should be removed from apps, merged
>     into messages.c, and redundant strings eliminated (which will
>     also help any future attempts at i18n.

Ok
It would be nice to rely on the linker, not on defines.
I remember me seeing a hack for Linux that eliminated unneeded functions
using some features of binutils.

> Sound ok to everyone?

Basically yes.

Regards,
Pavel Roskin






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