Requirements for adding new tools

[Ralph Siemsen]

Dag Wieers wrote:

> I'm very interested to have tcptraceroute functionality in busybox in 
> order to have bootable rescue images with the capability to check if 
> firewalls are configured correctly and trace where the problems are.
> 
> Is this a reasonable request or somehow (technically or 
> philosophically) impossible or undesirable ?

Are you just looking for tcptraceroute itself, or do you actually want 
it _in_ busybox's single executable?

Adding it (as a separate app) is easy, especially if you look at 
buildroot-derived projects that have already made the effort :)

Attached are Config.in and tcptraceroute.mk files, taken from the 
aspisos project.  If you create a packages/tcptraceroute and put these 
files in there, then edit packages/Config.in so that it sources the new 
subdirectory, that should be all that needs to be done.  (I haven't 
tried this against the latest SVN of buildroot, so they may need further 
modification).

There are a lot more "gems" hiding in various buildroot-derivative 
projects.  Should effort be made to get these merged into buildroot? 
This is a tough call, because the time to review each change, and then 
the ongoing maintenance to keep "allyesconfig" working increases for the 
builroot maintainers.  And do we really need all 18,999 packages that 
certain full-fledged distributions pride themselves for having?

OTOH, there are genuine useful bug fixes floating about that would 
probably benefit all buildrooters if they made their way into the main 
tree.  (I can hear you asking for specific examples, I will forward the 
next one I come across to the list, I promise!)

-R
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