Re: [dev] why reinvent busybox etc.?

From: FRIGN <dev_AT_frign.de>
Date: Fri, 7 Nov 2014 18:08:38 +0100

On Fri, 07 Nov 2014 11:56:23 -0500
Greg Reagle <greg.reagle_AT_umbc.edu> wrote:

> I infer from the existence of sbase and ubase that the other
> alternatives that already exist (e.g. busybox, toybox, GNU) are
> considered too full of suck. Is that right?

There are always certain levels of suckness. Busybox for instance is
okay for what it is made for (one binary for everything).
However, the shortcomings are a rather big codebase (but to be fair
for a reason) and the license (GPL).

> I would guess that the GNU utilities are considerd too bloated. What
> are the perceived shortcomings of busybox and toybox? What about Plan 9
> from User Space?

There's nothing wrong with busybox or toybox. I don't know Plan 9 FUS
well enough to give you a remark here.
There are small differences and I see sbase and ubase as a playground for
new ideas and solving problems as suckless as possible.

Take this example (date):

sbase/date -d 1 --> Thu Jan 1 01:00:01 1970
busybox/date -d 1 --> date: invalid date '1'

Converting UNIX-time is much more intuitive. But there are many more things.

Cheers

FRIGN

-- 
FRIGN <dev_AT_frign.de>
Received on Fri Nov 07 2014 - 18:08:38 CET

This archive was generated by hypermail 2.3.0 : Fri Nov 07 2014 - 18:12:19 CET