Tiny Core Base > Release Candidate Testing
tinycore_v3.8rc2
roberts:
Maro, busybox was scheduled to be rebuilt at 1.19. However, the team brought up the topic of slimming busybox. With the premise that if an applet is not required by the base then it should be considered for removal. Thus an audit occurred and several unused applets were removed. This was a team decision. This is consistent with the philosophy of Core. If you wish to add/remove other applets then it should be discussed for team consideration. Perhaps some of the team will share their thoughts on this matter and the resulting decision.
danielibarnes:
--- Quote ---until now one could rely on the fact that they were there right "out of the box".
--- End quote ---
I felt the same way about dropbear. I really missed it, but I understand that the core needs to be true to itself. Remastering it back in as an extension was trivial, anyway. Is there a detailed list of busybox applets which were removed and which extensions include the replacements?
roberts:
This was the result from the audit.
The new binary is about 11K smaller with these applets disabled:
-dhcprelay
-dnsd
-fakeidentd
-telnetd
-pscan
-uudecode
-uuencode
-zcip
I am mainly focused on Core custom so not big on extensions, perhaps Brian or other team members will chime in for replacements.
ixbrian:
Hi Maro,
Regarding 'stat', my personal opinion is that it would be useful to have included in Core because in my opinion it is a standard/essential UNIX command.
Regarding 'uuencode' / 'uudecode', they were flagged as a possible candidate for removal because they are not used anywhere in the base system. I totally agree with you that these commands can be useful and I have used them myself, however in my opinion they are not essential UNIX commands and therefore should be available via an extension rather than in base. For example, Ubuntu 11.04 does not include uuencode or uudecode in the default install.
Regarding Extension replacements for the removed BusyBox applets:
-dhcprelay - This relays DHCP requests between other computers on the local subnet to a DHCP server on a different subnet. There isn't an extension I am aware of that provides this. If there are people who need this functionality I would be happy to create an extension of a build of BusyBox that includes just this applet.
-dnsd - DNS server, see bind.tcz
-fakeidentd - Probably not used by anyone. Again, if there is a demand for this I would be happy to create a 1 applet BusyBox extension that provides this.
-telnetd - Telnet server, see inetutils-servers.tcz
-pscan - port scanner, see nmap.tcz
-uudecode/uuencode - See sharutils.tcz
-zcip - Zero config IP setup. Probably not used by anyone. I could create an extension if needed.
I would be more than happy to create a new extension that contains just a single BusyBox applet if these commands are needed by anyone. See busybox-httpd.tcz as an example of where a single BusyBox applet was turned in to an extension.
Thanks,
Brian
Lee:
--- Quote ---I would be more than happy to create a new extension that contains just a single BusyBox applet if these commands are needed by anyone.
--- End quote ---
I haven't done a lot of compiling of -anything- lately and I haven't actually -looked- at the busybox sources, but it seems to me that:
- the busy box source code must include an enormous amount of useful stuff
- busybox, as compiled for tc base, prunes out much of that to stay lean
- what's included in a busybox build is controlled by a fairly simple config list
- busybox behaves differently based upon the name by which it is invoked but it doesn't much matter what the busybox file is named - could be busybox or mybusybox or busyboxplus.
Would it be feasible to put together a busybox-dev.tcz with all the sources ready to compile so all the user has to do is tweak the config to include the desired additional applets and compile "mybusybox" to be packaged up as a personal extension.
Or is not quite that easy? I can see how such might not be for the average noob if there's rocket science involved.
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