[BusyBox] Building Linux from Scratch 5.0 with busybox: how I didit.

[Rob Landley]

On Thursday 06 May 2004 16:03, tom at ceisystems.com wrote:
> To all,
>
> > Alternatively, you could attempt to call these things bugs in
> > the build scripts, patch them to depend on more widely
> > available features, and see if the upstream maintainers are
> > non-parochial enough to accept said patches.
> >
> >     - Larry
>
> 	I'd agree with Larry.  In my opinion, I feel that scripts of any
> sort should rely on the most generic methods possible.  This makes them
> more portable from system to system and environment to environment, and
> much less susceptible to error due to changes in features within a
> certain program.

So rather than finishing busybox, everybody in the world should change all 
existing scripts.  While this is an Interesting argument, I don't find it 
particularly compelling somehow...

>  I've actually worked very hard to make my own boot
> scripts generic in this manner.  In doing so, they can be used on any
> standard Linux system...and probably most UNIX systems as well.

1) A compile time option to be SuS3 compliant is a good thing.  Our sort is 
not even _close_ to a full implementation.  (I'm working on it...)

http://www.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/009695399/utilities/sort.html

2) Our gzip and gunzip are _broken_.  They have _bugs_.  They produce 
incorrect archives, and give errors attempting to extract correct archives.  
This is a bad thing.

3) patch -i is not brain surgery to add, and won't significantly increase the 
binary size.  (Especially if there's the possibility to share code with other 
applets that optionally specify an input file.)

4) our awk implementation segfaults and hangs on various test cases.

5) Find's ability to accept parentheses is also part of SuS3:

http://www.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/009695399/utilities/find.html

What applets did I miss?

> Good luck,
> Thomas Cameron

You too,
Rob