mtd-utils in busybox

Ladislav Michl ladis at linux-mips.org
Fri Nov 28 14:51:44 UTC 2008


On Fri, Nov 28, 2008 at 03:17:14PM +0100, Schlaegl Manfred jun. wrote:
> Hi!
> 
> I'm new on the list. But I'm working and experimenting with busybox
> since two years.
> 
> For one of our projects, I've started to implement parts of mtd-utils
> (flash_eraseall, nandwrite, etc) in busybox.

All those utilities are nothing more than one few lines of code big functions.
They can hardly use more than busybox' parameters parsing. So no, I do not
see the point. Moreover, nandwrite is broken and noone bothered to fix
it even in mtd-utils. I would greatly appreciate if you could help with
fixing nandwrite in mtd-utils instead...
http://lists.infradead.org/pipermail/linux-mtd/2008-November/023677.html
Of course it is easy to simply remove already broken functionality,
but...

> Because ext2-utils also are avaliable in busybox, I think it would be a
> good idea to implement the whole mtd-utils in busybox and post it to
> mainline.

Nice you mentioned that. ext2-utils are also avaliable in busybox and
you can mention that two versions exists for quite long time, which is a
sign of bitroting.

> What do you think about this? Are there any counter-arguments to do so?

See above. Concentrate effort on fixing code at one place seems preferable
to me.

...and few numbers
   text    data     bss     dec     hex filename
   7379     932    2440   10751    29ff /sbin/nandwrite
   8278     332      44    8654    21ce /sbin/flash_eraseall
  54203     640     464   55307    d80b /bin/cp
Hopefully it makes more clear why having 'cp' in busybox makes more sense
that adding nandwrite.

Best regards,
	ladis



More information about the busybox mailing list