bytecraft/busybox: busybox mirror - Codeberg.org

Please see the LICENSE file for details on copying and usage.
Please refer to the INSTALL file for instructions on how to build.
What is busybox:
 BusyBox combines tiny versions of many common UNIX utilities into a single
 small executable. It provides minimalist replacements for most of the
 utilities you usually find in bzip2, coreutils, dhcp, diffutils, e2fsprogs,
 file, findutils, gawk, grep, inetutils, less, modutils, net-tools, procps,
 sed, shadow, sysklogd, sysvinit, tar, util-linux, and vim. The utilities
 in BusyBox often have fewer options than their full-featured cousins;
 however, the options that are included provide the expected functionality
 and behave very much like their larger counterparts.
 BusyBox has been written with size-optimization and limited resources in
 mind, both to produce small binaries and to reduce run-time memory usage.
 Busybox is also extremely modular so you can easily include or exclude
 commands (or features) at compile time. This makes it easy to customize
 embedded systems; to create a working system, just add /dev, /etc, and a
 Linux kernel. Busybox (usually together with uClibc) has also been used as
 a component of "thin client" desktop systems, live-CD distributions, rescue
 disks, installers, and so on.
 BusyBox provides a fairly complete POSIX environment for any small system,
 both embedded environments and more full featured systems concerned about
 space. Busybox is slowly working towards implementing the full Single Unix
 Specification V3 (http://www.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/009695399/), but isn't
 there yet (and for size reasons will probably support at most UTF-8 for
 internationalization). We are also interested in passing the Linux Test
 Project (http://ltp.sourceforge.net).
----------------
Using busybox:
 BusyBox is extremely configurable. This allows you to include only the
 components and options you need, thereby reducing binary size. Run 'make
 config' or 'make menuconfig' to select the functionality that you wish to
 enable. (See 'make help' for more commands.)
 The behavior of busybox is determined by the name it's called under: as
 "cp" it behaves like cp, as "sed" it behaves like sed, and so on. Called
 as "busybox" it takes the second argument as the name of the applet to
 run (I.E. "./busybox ls -l /proc").
 The "standalone shell" mode is an easy way to try out busybox; this is a
 command shell that calls the built-in applets without needing them to be
 installed in the path. (Note that this requires /proc to be mounted, if
 testing from a boot floppy or in a chroot environment.)
 The build automatically generates a file "busybox.links", which is used by
 'make install' to create symlinks to the BusyBox binary for all compiled in
 commands. This uses the CONFIG_PREFIX environment variable to specify
 where to install, and installs hardlinks or symlinks depending
 on the configuration preferences. (You can also manually run
 the install script at "applets/install.sh").
----------------
Downloading the current source code:
 Source for the latest released version, as well as daily snapshots, can always
 be downloaded from
 http://busybox.net/downloads/
 You can browse the up to the minute source code and change history online.
 http://git.busybox.net/busybox/
 Anonymous GIT access is available. For instructions, check out:
 http://www.busybox.net/source.html
 For those that are actively contributing and would like to check files in,
 see:
 http://busybox.net/developer.html
 The developers also have a bug and patch tracking system
 (https://bugs.busybox.net) although posting a bug/patch to the mailing list
 is generally a faster way of getting it fixed, and the complete archive of
 what happened is the git changelog.
 Note: if you want to compile busybox in a busybox environment you must
 select CONFIG_DESKTOP.
----------------
Getting help:
 when you find you need help, you can check out the busybox mailing list
 archives at http://busybox.net/lists/busybox/ or even join
 the mailing list if you are interested.
----------------
Bugs:
 if you find bugs, please submit a detailed bug report to the busybox mailing
 list at busybox@busybox.net. a well-written bug report should include a
 transcript of a shell session that demonstrates the bad behavior and enables
 anyone else to duplicate the bug on their own machine. the following is such
 an example:
 to: busybox@busybox.net
 from: diligent@testing.linux.org
 subject: /bin/date doesn't work
 package: busybox
 version: 1.00
 when i execute busybox 'date' it produces unexpected results.
 with gnu date i get the following output:
	$ date
	fri oct 8 14:19:41 mdt 2004
 but when i use busybox date i get this instead:
	$ date
	illegal instruction
 i am using debian unstable, kernel version 2.4.25-vrs2 on a netwinder,
 and the latest uclibc from cvs.
	-diligent
 note the careful description and use of examples showing not only what
 busybox does, but also a counter example showing what an equivalent app
 does (or pointing to the text of a relevant standard). Bug reports lacking
 such detail may never be fixed... Thanks for understanding.
----------------
Portability:
 Busybox is developed and tested on Linux 2.4 and 2.6 kernels, compiled
 with gcc (the unit-at-a-time optimizations in version 3.4 and later are
 worth upgrading to get, but older versions should work), and linked against
 uClibc (0.9.27 or greater) or glibc (2.2 or greater). In such an
 environment, the full set of busybox features should work, and if
 anything doesn't we want to know about it so we can fix it.
 There are many other environments out there, in which busybox may build
 and run just fine. We just don't test them. Since busybox consists of a
 large number of more or less independent applets, portability is a question
 of which features work where. Some busybox applets (such as cat and rm) are
 highly portable and likely to work just about anywhere, while others (such as
 insmod and losetup) require recent Linux kernels with recent C libraries.
 Earlier versions of Linux and glibc may or may not work, for any given
 configuration. Linux 2.2 or earlier should mostly work (there's still
 some support code in things like mount.c) but this is no longer regularly
 tested, and inherently won't support certain features (such as long files
 and --bind mounts). The same is true for glibc 2.0 and 2.1: expect a higher
 testing and debugging burden using such old infrastructure. (The busybox
 developers are not very interested in supporting these older versions, but
 will probably accept small self-contained patches to fix simple problems.)
 Some environments are not recommended. Early versions of uClibc were buggy
 and missing many features: upgrade. Linking against libc5 or dietlibc is
 not supported and not interesting to the busybox developers. (The first is
 obsolete and has no known size or feature advantages over uClibc, the second
 has known bugs that its developers have actively refused to fix.) Ancient
 Linux kernels (2.0.x and earlier) are similarly uninteresting.
 In theory it's possible to use Busybox under other operating systems (such as
 MacOS X, Solaris, Cygwin, or the BSD Fork Du Jour). This generally involves
 a different kernel and a different C library at the same time. While it
 should be possible to port the majority of the code to work in one of
 these environments, don't be surprised if it doesn't work out of the box. If
 you're into that sort of thing, start small (selecting just a few applets)
 and work your way up.
 In 2005 Shaun Jackman has ported busybox to a combination of newlib
 and libgloss, and some of his patches have been integrated.
Supported hardware:
 BusyBox in general will build on any architecture supported by gcc. We
 support both 32 and 64 bit platforms, and both big and little endian
 systems.
 Under 2.4 Linux kernels, kernel module loading was implemented in a
 platform-specific manner. Busybox's insmod utility has been reported to
 work under ARM, CRIS, H8/300, x86, ia64, x86_64, m68k, MIPS, PowerPC, S390,
 SH3/4/5, Sparc, and v850e. Anything else probably won't work.
 The module loading mechanism for the 2.6 kernel is much more generic, and
 we believe 2.6.x kernel module loading support should work on all
 architectures supported by the kernel.
----------------
Please feed suggestions, bug reports, insults, and bribes back to the busybox
mailing list:
	busybox@busybox.net
and/or maintainer:
	Denys Vlasenko
	<vda.linux@googlemail.com>