[BusyBox] Kernel compiling with busybox

[Sean Graham]

Hello everyone!

First off, just wanted to say how great I think this project is.

Secondly, I lost some hair recently while trying to compile a linux kernel 
(2.2.16) on a system based off of busybox (BasicLinux 2.01).  It turns out 
that (apparently?) some of the tools that busybox implements are not done 
in the same manner of the tools that they are replacing.

For example, I had to load a real copy of gzip and gunzip because while 
trying to do a "make bzImage" for the kernel, this line failed (found in 
arch/boot/compressed/Makefile)

gzip -f -9 < $$tmppiggy > $$tmppiggy.gz

This resulted in the output file ($$tmppiggy.gz) being 0 bytes long, thus 
failing compilation.  Replacing the busybox gzip with the real gzip caused 
that operation to complete successfully.

I had several other problems (i.e. grep, sed and find not accepting 
standard parameters) that caused quite a bit of frustration, but when I 
replaced them with standard versions everything worked fine.  Has anyone 
else tried to compile a kernel using busybox tools?  I tried a quick browse 
through the buglist and couldn't find anything that seemed to match, which 
either means that nobody has tried, or I did something horribly wrong :)

Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks,

-- Sean