diff options
Diffstat (limited to 'TODO')
| -rw-r--r-- | TODO | 199 |
1 files changed, 100 insertions, 99 deletions
@@ -1,28 +1,111 @@ Busybox TODO -Stuff that needs to be done. All of this is fair game for 1.2. +Stuff that needs to be done. This is organized by who plans to get around to +doing it eventually, but that doesn't mean they "own" the item. If you want to +do one of these bounce an email off the person it's listed under to see if they +have any suggestions how they plan to go about it, and to minimize conflicts +between your work and theirs. But otherwise, all of these are fair game. + +Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>: + Migrate calloc() and bb_calloc() occurrences to bb_xzalloc(). + Remove obsolete _() wrapper crud for internationalization we don't do. + Figure out where we need utf8 support, and add it. + + sh + The command shell situation is a big mess. We have three or four different + shells that don't really share any code, and the "standalone shell" doesn't + work all that well (especially not in a chroot environment), due to apps not + being reentrant. I'm writing a new shell (bbsh) to unify the various + shells and configurably add the minimal set of bash features people + actually use. The hardest part is it has to configure down as small as + lash while providing lash's features. The rest is easy in comparison. + bzip2 + Compression-side support. + init + General cleanup. + Unify base64 handling. + There's base64 encoding and decoding going on in: + networking/wget.c:base64enc() + coreutils/uudecode.c:read_base64() + coreutils/uuencode.c:tbl_base64[] + networking/httpd.c:decodeBase64() + And probably elsewhere. That needs to be unified into libbb functions. + Do a SUSv3 audit + Look at the full Single Unix Specification version 3 (available online at + "http://www.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/009695399/nfindex.html") and + figure out which of our apps are compliant, and what we're missing that + we might actually care about. + + Even better would be some kind of automated compliance test harness that + exercises each command line option and the various corner cases. + Internationalization + How much internationalization should we do? + + The low hanging fruit is UTF-8 character set support. We should do this. + (Vodz pointed out the shell's cmdedit as needing work here. What else?) + + We also have lots of hardwired english text messages. Consolidating this + into some kind of message table not only makes translation easier, but + also allows us to consolidate redundant (or close) strings. + + We probably don't want to be bloated with locale support. (Not unless we + can cleanly export it from our underlying C library without having to + concern ourselves with it directly. Perhaps a few specific things like a + config option for "date" are low hanging fruit here?) + + What level should things happen at? How much do we care about + internationalizing the text console when X11 and xterms are so much better + at it? (There's some infrastructure here we don't implement: The + "unicode_start" and "unicode_stop" shell scripts need "vt-is-UTF8" and a + --unicode option to loadkeys. That implies a real loadkeys/dumpkeys + implementation to replace loadkmap/dumpkmap. Plus messing with console font + loading. Is it worth it, or do we just say "use X"?) + + Individual compilation of applets. + It would be nice if busybox had the option to compile to individual applets, + for people who want an alternate implementation less bloated than the gnu + utils (or simply with less political baggage), but without it being one big + executable. + + Turning libbb into a real dll is another possibility, especially if libbb + could export some of the other library interfaces we've already more or less + got the code for (like zlib). + buildroot - Make a "dogfood" option + Busybox 1.1 will be capable of replacing most gnu packages for real world + use, such as developing software or in a live CD. It needs wider testing. + + Busybox should now be able to replace bzip2, coreutils, e2fsprogs, file, + findutils, gawk, grep, inetutils, less, modutils, net-tools, patch, procps, + sed, shadow, sysklogd, sysvinit, tar, util-linux, and vim. The resulting + system should be self-hosting (I.E. able to rebuild itself from source + code). This means it would need (at least) binutils, gcc, and make, or + equivalents. + + It would be a good "eating our own dogfood" test if buildroot had the option + of using a "make allyesconfig" busybox instead of the all of the above + packages. Anything that's wrong with the resulting system, we can fix. (It + would be nice to be able to upgrade busybox to be able to replace bash and + diffutils as well, but we're not there yet.) + + One example of an existing system that does this already is Firmware Linux: + http://www.landley.net/code/firmware + initramfs + Busybox should have a sample initramfs build script. This depends on + bbsh, mdev, and switch_root. + + +Bernhard Fischer <rep.nop@anon.at>: + Makefile stuff: + make -j is broken, -j1 is forced atm + +As yet unclaimed: -build system - make -j is broken, -j1 is forced atm - Make sure that the flags get pinned in e.g. Rules.mak so when expanding them - later on you get the cached result without the need to re-evaluate them. ---- find doesn't understand (), lots of susv3 stuff. ---- -sh - The command shell situation is a big mess. We have three or four different - shells that don't really share any code, and the "standalone shell" doesn't - work all that well (especially not in a chroot environment), due to apps not - being reentrant. Unifying the various shells and figuring out a configurable - way of adding the minimal set of bash features a given script uses is a big - job, but it would be a big improvement. - - Note: Rob Landley (rob@landley.net) is working on a new unified shell called - bbsh, but it's a low priority... ---- diff - Also, make sure we handle empty files properly: + Make sure we handle empty files properly: From the patch man page: you can remove a file by sending out a context diff that compares @@ -45,18 +128,9 @@ man (How doclifter might work into this is anybody's guess.) --- -bzip2 - Compression-side support. ---- -init - General cleanup. ---- ar Write support? --- -mdev - Micro-udev. ---- crond turn FEATURE_DEBUG_OPT into ENABLE_FEATURE_CROND_DEBUG_OPT @@ -74,46 +148,6 @@ bb_close() with fsync() You need to call fsync() if you care about errors that occur after write(), but that can have a big performance impact. So make it a config option. --- -Unify base64 handling. - There's base64 encoding and decoding going on in: - networking/wget.c:base64enc() - coreutils/uudecode.c:read_base64() - coreutils/uuencode.c:tbl_base64[] - networking/httpd.c:decodeBase64() - And probably elsewhere. That needs to be unified into libbb functions. ---- -Do a SUSv3 audit - Look at the full Single Unix Specification version 3 (available online at - "http://www.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/009695399/nfindex.html") and - figure out which of our apps are compliant, and what we're missing that - we might actually care about. - - Even better would be some kind of automated compliance test harness that - exercises each command line option and the various corner cases. ---- -Internationalization - How much internationalization should we do? - - The low hanging fruit is UTF-8 character set support. We should do this. - (Vodz pointed out the shell's cmdedit as needing work here. What else?) - - We also have lots of hardwired english text messages. Consolidating this - into some kind of message table not only makes translation easier, but - also allows us to consolidate redundant (or close) strings. - - We probably don't want to be bloated with locale support. (Not unless we can - cleanly export it from our underlying C library without having to concern - ourselves with it directly. Perhaps a few specific things like a config - option for "date" are low hanging fruit here?) - - What level should things happen at? How much do we care about - internationalizing the text console when X11 and xterms are so much better - at it? (There's some infrastructure here we don't implement: The - "unicode_start" and "unicode_stop" shell scripts need "vt-is-UTF8" and a - --unicode option to loadkeys. That implies a real loadkeys/dumpkeys - implementation to replace loadkmap/dumpkmap. Plus messing with console font - loading. Is it worth it, or do we just say "use X"?) ---- Unify archivers Lots of archivers have the same general infrastructure. The directory traversal code should be factored out, and the guts of each archiver could @@ -129,39 +163,6 @@ Text buffer support. a whole file into memory and act on it. There might be an opportunity for shared code in there that could be moved into libbb... --- -Individual compilation of applets. - It would be nice if busybox had the option to compile to individual applets, - for people who want an alternate implementation less bloated than the gnu - utils (or simply with less political baggage), but without it being one big - executable. - - Turning libbb into a real dll is another possibility, especially if libbb - could export some of the other library interfaces we've already more or less - got the code for (like zlib). ---- -buildroot - Make a "dogfood" option - Busybox 1.1 will be capable of replacing most gnu packages for real world use, - such as developing software or in a live CD. It needs wider testing. - - Busybox should now be able to replace bzip2, coreutils, e2fsprogs, file, - findutils, gawk, grep, inetutils, less, modutils, net-tools, patch, procps, - sed, shadow, sysklogd, sysvinit, tar, util-linux, and vim. The resulting - system should be self-hosting (I.E. able to rebuild itself from source code). - This means it would need (at least) binutils, gcc, and make, or equivalents. - - It would be a good "eating our own dogfood" test if buildroot had the option - of using a "make allyesconfig" busybox instead of the all of the above - packages. Anything that's wrong with the resulting system, we can fix. (It - would be nice to be able to upgrade busybox to be able to replace bash and - diffutils as well, but we're not there yet.) - - One example of an existing system that does this already is Firmware Linux: - http://www.landley.net/code/firmware ---- -initramfs - Busybox should have a sample initramfs build script. This depends on - bbsh, mdev, and switch_root. ---- Memory Allocation We have a CONFIG_BUFFER mechanism that lets us select whether to do memory allocation on the stack or the heap. Unfortunately, we're not using it much. |