Build doesn't fail if od not installed

Denys Vlasenko vda.linux at googlemail.com
Thu Sep 16 21:28:08 UTC 2010


On Thursday 16 September 2010 14:08, Harald Becker wrote:
>  Hi!
> > Yes, can do. See attachment.
> Thx ... I'm trying to install that patch ... but that's a bit difficult
> (not on machine, which received mail ... has to be exported/transfered =
> several manual steps)

What do you imply by this? Is it my fault that you had to suffer so much?


> > But where should we stop?
> Denys, we should never stop to check for errors. Especially on a build.
> If any required program is missing/or fails during execution, we should
> stop and report the error ... accept, we are able to handle the error
> situation.

Even for an essential program like cat?


> > od is part of the coreutils. The key part here is "core".
> I don't like od.
> I don't use od.

You never know what semi-obscure standard tool will be used
in build systems. Say, kernel build system...


> I don't like to have things hanging around which don't get used.
> --> I kicked od off.

And then you tried to BUILD a software package. This is not
a thing typically done on an embedded device.

If you are using busybox on a non-embedded device, planning
to do builds and/or running a "desktop" Linux distro, then
you certainly bringing a world of hurt on yourself by removing
stuff which belongs to coreutils.

As far as I know, all people who use busybox on such systems
are selecting the maximum set of applets. And after that,
it's too risky to install them all (though most do work fine).
For example, ar applet is far from being ready to replace
standard ar tool from binutils. Therefore, you need to resort
to manual selection of applets to (sym)link from /bin
to busybox.


> That's it. I didn't complain about using od. It was easily to fix after
> detection of the failure reason. I'm just complaining about, busy not
> failing it's build on a missing program.
> 
> > Should I also make build fail if dd is not available? Or sed? Or grep?
> > Or cp? mv? rm? cat? mkdir?
>
> Yes, you should. At every single program used! Accept you catch the
> error and fix it in any way, e.g. use a different program available.
>
> I know it looks ugly, that I kicked of that od, but I'm going to install
> a production machine not a fully fledged development environment. I
> don't want to have the machine over crowed with dozens of programs never
> used. Less stuff on the machines make things simpler and easier to
> overlook if everything is alright. That so many packages think, they
> have to install plenty of extra stuff, which I don't need, is what I do
> at most hate about those distributions. I don't want to have every
> utility hanging around, which may eventually be useful in some rare
> corner cases.
> 
> ... and: It's my machine, it's my decision which things I want to have
> installed. It's just a kind of philosophy of how to avoid possible flaws
> ... keep things simple and small. Less stuff = less possible flaws.

Fine.

It is my project, and it's my decision what to do and what not to do
with it.

So I decided to do this: from now on I will act on your complaints
(should I say "demands"?) only if they are expressed in the patch form.
You want something fixed? Nobody stops you.

-- 
vda


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