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diff --git a/www/news.html b/www/news.html index 084d7538..ca464ceb 100755 --- a/www/news.html +++ b/www/news.html @@ -8,7 +8,238 @@ a development environment. See the links on the left for details.</p> <h2>News</h2> -<hr><b>April 5, 2015</b> +<a name="19-07-2015" /><a href="#19-07-2015"><hr><h2><b>July 19, 2015</b></h2></a> +<blockquote><p> +The reason why it was published in the form of a micro sub meson electronic +component is that if it were printed in normal book form, an interstellar +hitchhiker would require several inconveniently large buildings to carry it +around in." - The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy </p></blockquote> + +<p><a href=downloads/toybox-0.6.0.tar.gz>Toybox 0.6.0</a> +(<a href=https://github.com/landley/toybox/releases/tag/0.6.0>git commit</a>) +is out. (Yes, git. See the <a href=#05-04-2015>previous news entry</a>.)</p> + +<p>Sorry for the unusually long gap between releases. Since last release Ye +Olde Project Maintainer traveled to japan twice and had two more "once +a century" floods at home. (Probably a coincidence.) Still catching up.</p> + +<h3><b>CELF/ELC talk and Wikipedia[citation needed] article</b></h3> + +<p>I gave another State Of The Toybox talk +(<a href=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=04XwAbtPmAg>video</a> +<a href=http://landley.net/talks/celf-2015.txt>outline</a>), in which I +repeat my <a href=http://landley.net/notes-2013.html#07-11-2013>perennial</a> +<a href=https://twitter.com/landley/status/557309224535851009>complaint</a> +that Wikipedia[citation needed] +<a href=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toybox>still</a> +<a href=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BusyBox#Controversy_over_Toybox>says</a> +toybox was relicensed before its hiatus, when relicensing was why +the hiatus ended.</p> + +<p>Since Wikipedia[citation needed] seems unable to do the +<a href=#15-11-2011>most</a> +<a href=http://landley.net/hg/toybox/log/tip/LICENSE>basic</a> +<a href=http://landley.net/notes-2011.html#13-11-2011>research</a> on +this point, and has stuck to an incorrect sequence of events for years, +I've been gradually escalating my attempts to correct them. Toybox +came out of mothballs in November 2011 <b>because</b> it could be +relicensed. That's what opened up a new niche busybox wasn't already +filling with a 10 year headstart.</p> + +<a name="asterisk_back" /> +<p>The article has plenty of smaller issues<a href=#asterisk>*</a>, but +given that I gave an entire talk at Ohio LinuxFest in 2013 +(<a href=http://landley.net/talks/ohio-2013.txt>outline</a>, +<a href=https://archive.org/download/OhioLinuxfest2013/24-Rob_Landley-The_Rise_and_Fall_of_Copyleft.mp3>audio</a>) on why I switched away from GPL for +my projects, that one bugs me.</p> + +<h3><b>New stuff this release</b></h3> + +<p>There's a new android menu in menuconfig, and rather a lot of Linux +Security Module support (Smack for Tizen from Xavier Roche and José Bollo, +and SELinux for Android from Elliott Hughes; see +the Security Blanket menu under global settings in menuconfig) has +trickled in, although there's still more to come.</p> + +<p><b>New commands:</b> Added reset, nproc, ionice, and iorenice. +Elliott Hughes contributed xxd, runcon, +restorecon, load_policy, getenforce, setenforce, getprop, and setprop. +Promoted shred, nsenter, and hwclock.</p> + +<p>You can once again build catv now the flag infrastructure's been updated to +let it coexist with cat -v. +And on a long plane flight I wrote +hexedit, an interactive hex editor that implements the start of +cursor control infrastructure (for eventual use by less and vi and shell +command history and so on).</p> + +<p><b>New options:</b> Added sed -E as a BSD-compatible synonym for -r. +Upgraded oneit with -r (restart), -3 (send exiting PID values to child), +and signal handling. Added -v option to timeout, -m to mknod, -u to shred, +-t to dmesg, and -123 to head and tail. Added implicit "." to grep -r without +any files to work on. Hyejin Kim requested prefix support for truncate -s. +Greg Hackman added -inum to find. +Jan Cybulski added the smack side of ls -Z support. Various patches also +added -Z to mkdir, mknod, and mkfifo. +Basic cp --preserve support went in, but not yet the xattr/LSM parts.</p> + +<p>The toybox command now has a --version option, +which uses "git describe" if available.</p> + +<p><b>Build infrastructure:</b> +The "make change" target now saves the output of each failed standalone +command build in a .bad file, and "make defconfig" is quieter now.</p> + +<p>Paul Barker submitted a large patch changing command install paths so +"toybox can be installed alongside busybox without confusing +update-alternatives". (There's some argument over +what the right paths should be, and I'm waiting for +people to tell me what else needs fixing because I have no idea. I've +been symlinking /bin to /usr/bin since 2002 +<a href=http://landley.net/writing/hackermonthly-issue022-pg33.pdf>for +historical reasons</a>.)</p> + +<p><b>Docs:</b> The repository link now goes to github, with another link +to the commit rss feed.</p> + +<p>Elliott Hughes updated the Android section of the roadmap +(and he would know). Redid bits of scripts/mkstatus.py to make updating +status.html easier, and the README is larger.</p> + +<p>More description of option parsing in code.html, which now describes the +FLAG_x macros, switching flag macro sets with FOR_newcommand, how +configuration zeroes flag macros and using FORCE_FLAGS to suppress the +zeroing of options shared between commands. Also added description of ";" +to make --longopts take an optional =value part, and more about TOYBOX_DEBUG +to check NEWTOY() option strings (otherwise a bad option string makes +lib/args.c obviously segfault, but doesn't explain why).</p> + +<p>Added a "Why 0BSD?" section to license.html when submitting zero clause bsd +to SPDX (according to the pending license spreadsheet, it's been approved for +SPDX 2.2).</p> + +<p>The old list of commands needing cleanup but not in pending was +removed from toys/pending/README and instead the issues were added +as TODO comments in the individual commands.</p> + +<p><b>Bugfixes:</b> +Fixed mount -a segfaulting without -O (reported by Janus Troelsen), +and made it try a "become rw" ioctl() on the block device before falling +back to mounting read only (because Android expects that). +Fixed printf -- and printf ---. Lots of tweaks to ls -l spacing with +different options. Make touch -d and -t actually set time when you don't +specify nanoseconds. +Fixed a subtle bug where recursive calls (toybox commands that run other +toybox commands) weren't resetting all their state. (This manifested as +a "no }" error from "find | xargs sed", but could cause other problems.) +And David Halls reported another sed bug trying to compile libiconv (which +left extra \ at the start of lines in a generated shell script, breaking +the build). Output an error message for "cat /mnt".</p> + +<p>Kylie McClain reported that mktemp broke when $TMPDIR was set to an empty +string (which is not the same as unset), that install/find didn't support +numeric uid/gids, and that sort -z affects both input and output. +Isabella Parakiss fixed a printf.c bug. +David Halls fixed bugs in install -D and find -exec. Samuel Holland +fixed unshare -r. Hyejin Kim fixed makedevs with a count of 1, fold -w +range checking, an error path in scripts/mkflags.c, added -i to dhcpd, +and stopped su from prompting the root user for the new user's password. +Jan Cybulski spotted wrong indentation when combining ls -s and -i with -C and +-x. José Bollo fixed stat %G. Sameer Pradhan fixed a bug in mkfifo -Z.</p> + +<p>Elliott Hughes asked for a default SIGPIPE handler to disable +the signal handler bionic's dynamic loader installs (yes really). Still not +100% sure what the correct behavior is there. (Posix is +(<a href=http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.comp.standards.posix.austin.general/10915>actively unhelpful</a>, but at least they're taking +<a href=http://austingroupbugs.net/view.php?id=789#c1976>years to +make up their mind</a>. Elliott also sent patches to fix a typo in +useradd.test, add missing arguments to error_exit() calls and clean up +printf() format strings, fix an off by one error in human_readable(), +fix dmesg -c error reporting, fix a segfault in comma_scan where the option +was the last item in optlist (triggered by mount -o ro,remount), fix +hwclock -w, made ifconfig print lowercase MAC addresses (it was bothering +him), and make terminal_size() read the right environment variable +(LINES, not ROWS). And he suggested the test suite notice high command exit +values (corresponding to segfault or other signals).</p> + +<p>People are apparently using toys/pending commands, despite the police tape +and flashing lights, so added louder warnings to toys/pending/README. +Elliott Hughes fixed various problems with tar, dd, more, and top. +Hyejin Kim cleaned up syslogd and dumpleases. Isaac Dunham added hotplug +support to mdev. Yeongdeok Suh added RFC-3315 ipv6 support to dhcpd.</p> + +<p>I rewrote ps.c from scratch (in pending), but it's not ready for real use +yet.</p> + +<p><b>Portability:</b> +On the portability front Bernhard Rosenkranzer fixed a problem where the +menuconfig code wouldn't compile in C99 mode. (This led to me documenting +the craptacular nature of kconfig in a README, and the plan to replace it +sometime before 1.0.) Some extra flags to shut up overzealous llvm warnings +were added (and have to be probed for because gcc complains about +arguments it doesn't recognize even when they switch stuff _off_ using +a standard syntax). Don't depend on malloc(0) to return non-null in ls. +David Halls fixed some mac/ios portability issues, +implying somebody's built at least part of toybox on a mac.</p> + +<p>Added basename_r() to lib/lib.c because the posix semantics for basename() +are stupid but what the gnu guys did to it was appalling. +Turns out bionic already had a basename_r(), but posix still doesn't. +Fixed it up in portability.h, but this +could break more stuff in future. (Correct fix is to lobby posix to add it, +which would probably take about 15 years...)</p> + +<p><b>Infrastructure:</b> +The build now checks $LDFLAGS for linker-only flags, and allows the strip +command to fail (binflt toolchains provide a strip that doesn't work). +Since time.c uses floating point, added TOYBOX_FLOAT dependency in config.</p> + +<p>There's a lib/lsm.h defining varous inline functions for linux +security modules stuff, if (lsm_enabled()) should turn into a compile-time +constant 0 and let code drop out when TOYBOX_LSM_NONE selected, but +testing against CFG_TOYBOX_LSM_NONE or derived symbols is still useful +becuase when it _is_ enabled the probe turns into a system call you +don't want to repeat too much.</p> + +<p>Switched a bunch of commands from signal() to xsignal(). Factored out +xgetgrnamid() and xgetpwnamid() into xwrap.c. Make time.c depend on +TOYBOX_FLOAT (since it always uses float so shouldn't be available on +build targets without even software float). Added readfileat() to lib/lib.c.</p> + +<p>The dirtree infrastructure now passes in full flags for the old symlink +field, and the new DIRTREE_SHUTUP flag disables warnings if a file vanishes +out from under you during traverse. New dirtree_start() wrapper to +create dirtree root with only two arguments.</p> + +<p>The not-curses infrastructure introduced by hexedit mostly moved to +lib/interestingtimes.c.</p> + +<a name="asterisk" /> +<a href="#asterisk_back" />Asterisk:</a> such when +Tim contacted me (my blog says a couple days before nov 13, 2011, I.E. +11/11/11 not some specific day 2 months later) to ask if I wanted to work +on a new project he was proposing called +<a href=http://www.elinux.org/Busybox_replacement_project>BentoBox</a> +(because I used to do busybox, he'd forgotten toybox existed +until I brought it up). And don't ask me what "focuses not on compatibility +with its GNU counterparts" means when CP_MORE adds 7 non-posix options +and toys/other has 84 commands in neither posix nor LSB. I think they're +struggling to explain the difference having dismissed "licensing" as being +the reason it started up again after a long hiatus? The reason I don't think +GNU is special is there are a half-dozen other independent +implementations of the same unix command tools out there (AT&T, +BSD, Coherent, Minix, plan 9, busybox, toybox, and several more analyzed in +the <a href=roadmap.html>roadmap</a>, and that's ignoring the implementations +written for DOS or in assembly over the years). But I do care what +Linux From Scratch expects, and if it's +<a href=http://archive.linuxfromscratch.org/lfs-museum/7.6/LFS-BOOK-7.6-NOCHUNKS.html#ch-tools-gcc-pass1>calling mv -v</a> +then I impelement mv -v +even if <a href=http://landley.net/toybox/roadmap.html>posix hasn't got +it</a>. And I don't know why "gnu counterparts" would describe this when +util-linux isn't a gnu package, nor are info-zip, e2fsprogs, kmod, less, +procps, shadow, sysklogd, vim, zlib, sudo, dhcpcd...</p> + +<a name="05-04-2015" /><a href="#05-04-2015"><hr><h2><b>April 5, 2015</b></h2></a> <p>Since <a href=https://android.googlesource.com/platform/external/toybox/>android</a> and <a href=https://git.tizen.org/cgit/platform/upstream/toybox.git>tizen</a> and <a href=https://github.com/kraj/meta-musl/tree/master/recipes-core/toybox>openembedded</a> @@ -18,7 +249,7 @@ than the mercurial repository, I bit the bullet and switched the project's repo <a href=https://github.com/landley/toybox>to git</a>. Georgi's <a href=https://github.com/gfto/toybox>mirror</a> is now pulling from that.</p> -<hr><b>February 25, 2015</b> +<a name="25-02-2015" /><a href="#25-02-2015"><hr><h2><b>February 25, 2015</b></h2></a> <blockquote><p>"A common mistake that people make when trying to design something completely foolproof is to underestimate the ingenuity of complete fools."</p><p>- The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.</p></blockquote> @@ -138,7 +369,7 @@ supported, so stop using it.</p> <p>Fixed toy_exec() to detect when argc is in optargs, so we don't need a separate xexec_optargs().</p> -<hr><b>February 18, 2015</b> +<a name="18-02-2015" /><a href="#18-02-2015"><hr><h2><b>February 18, 2015</b></h2></a> <p>Dreamhost continues to be unable to make mailing list archives work, so here's <a href=http://www.mail-archive.com/toybox@lists.landley.net/>another list archive</a> with a less awkward interface than gmane.</p> @@ -155,7 +386,7 @@ web archive, from Dec 15-Jan 3, and then another hole from Jan 16-Feb 18. The relevant messages are in both of the other archives. Here's hoping the chronic archive constipation problem won't happen a sixth time.</p> -<hr><b>December 30, 2014</b> +<a name="30-12-2014" /><a href="#30-12-2014"><hr><h2><b>December 30, 2014</b></h2></a> <p>Due to Dreamhost's <a href=http://landley.net/dreamhost.txt>ongoing</a> <a href=http://landley.net/dreamhost2.txt>inability</a> to make mailman work reliably, I've added a link to a backup web archive at @@ -167,7 +398,7 @@ on the left.</p> <p>Update (January 27, 2015): they're <a href=https://twitter.com/landley/status/558428839462703104>still working on it</a>.</p> -<hr><b>November 19, 2014</b> +<a name="19-11-2014" /><a href="#19-11-2014"><hr><h2><b>November 19, 2014</b></h2></a> <blockquote><p>"This time it was right, it would work, and no one would have to get nailed to anything." - The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.</p></blockquote> @@ -246,7 +477,7 @@ close each supplied filehandle itself.)</p> <p>The printf-style escape parsing ("\n" and friends) got factored out into a new unescape() function.</p> -<hr><b>October 2, 2014</b> +<a name="02-10-2014" /><a href="#02-10-2014"><hr><h2><b>October 2, 2014</b></h2></a> <blockquote><p>"There is an art, it says, or rather, a knack to flying. The knack lies in learning how to throw yourself at the ground and miss... Clearly, it is this second part, the missing, which presents the @@ -397,7 +628,7 @@ sort on the host broke in non-C locales.</p> <p>Divya Kothari submitted tests for chmod, link, tar, bzcat, xzcat, zcat, and hostname. (And more, but that's all that's merged so far.)</p> -<hr><b>July 7, 2014</b> +<a name="07-07-2014" /><a href="#07-07-2014"><hr><h2><b>July 7, 2014</b></h2></a> <blockquote><p>"This planet has - or rather had - a problem, which was this: most of the people living on it were unhappy for pretty much of the time. Many solutions were suggested for this problem, but most of these were largely @@ -519,7 +750,7 @@ bytes). The build infrastructure now notices duplicate commands (so if you cp toys/pending/command.c toys/other/command.c and forget to delete the first one, the build break is now more informative).</p> -<hr><b>April 20, 2014</b> +<a name="20-04-2014" /><a href="#20-04-2014"><hr><h2><b>April 20, 2014</b></h2></a> <blockquote><p>And to this end they built themselves a stupendous supercomputer which was so amazingly intelligent that even before the data banks had been connected up it had started from "I think therefore I am" and got as @@ -605,7 +836,7 @@ of different kinds of simplicity, and why comments aren't a substitute for good code. The README no longer trails off into obvious unfinished confusion at the end. Each page on the website should now have its own title.</p> -<hr><b>November 18, 2013</b> +<a name="18-11-2013" /><a href="#18-11-2013"><hr><h2><b>November 18, 2013</b></h2></a> <blockquote><p>"Space," it says, "is big. Really big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mindbogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the street to the chemist's, but that's just peanuts to space." - The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.</p></blockquote> @@ -642,7 +873,7 @@ The "toynet.h" file got folded into toys.h since musl supports it and micromanging uClibc options isn't very interesting anymore. The test suite now uses scripts/single.sh when testing a single command.</p> -<hr><b>September 17, 2013</b> +<a name="17-09-2013" /><a href="#17-09-2013"><hr><h2><b>September 17, 2013</b></h2></a> <blockquote><p>"Think of a number," said the computer, "any number." Arthur told the computer the telephone number of King's Cross railway station passenger inquiries, on the grounds that it must have some function, @@ -771,13 +1002,13 @@ delete sub and didn't exit with an error either. Neither was correct, rm should now be fixed.</p> <p> -<hr><b>July 26, 2013</b> +<a name="26-07-2013" /><a href="#26-07-2013"><hr><h2><b>July 26, 2013</b></h2></a> <p>Georgi Chorbadzhiyski maintains a <a href=https://github.com/gfto/toybox>git mirror</a> of the repository on github, automatically updated from the mercurial every 6 hours. The mirror is read only, but you can generate patches against it and post them to the list.</p> -<hr><b>July 2, 2013</b> +<a name="02-07-2013" /><a href="#02-07-2013"><hr><h2><b>July 2, 2013</b></h2></a> <blockquote><p>"Time is an illusion. Lunchtime doubly so." "Very deep. You should send that in to the Reader's Digest. They've got a page for people like you." - @@ -856,7 +1087,7 @@ the GPL but "all copies must include this magic text blob" somehow don't?</p> or less public domain with a liability disclaimer, but we're still calling it BSD (sometimes "0 clause BSD") to avoid explaining.</p> -<hr><b>March 21, 2013</b> +<a name="21-03-2013" /><a href="#21-03-2013"><hr><h2><b>March 21, 2013</b></h2></a> <p>Video of my ELC talk "<a href=http://youtu.be/SGmtP5Lg_t0>Why is Toybox?</a>" is up on youtube. Related materials include the @@ -891,7 +1122,7 @@ the ads, it's The Linux Foundation.)</p> </span> -<hr><b>March 14, 2013</b> +<a name="14-03-2013" /><a href="#14-03-2013"><hr><h2><b>March 14, 2013</b></h2></a> <blockquote><p>"Ford, you're turning into a penguin. Stop it." - The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.</p></blockquote> @@ -914,7 +1145,7 @@ should at least compile (although defconfig is still what's useful).</p> <p>Significant roadmap updates, checking several other multicall binaries (klibc, sash, sbase, s6...) to see what commands they include.</p> -<hr><b>January 18, 2013</b> +<a name="18-01-2013" /><a href="#18-01-2013"><hr><h2><b>January 18, 2013</b></h2></a> <blockquote><p>This must be Thursday. I never could get the hang of Thursdays. - The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.</p></blockquote> <p><a href=downloads/toybox-0.4.3.tar.bz2>Toybox 0.4.3</a> is based on @@ -955,7 +1186,7 @@ it now correctly detects "/trailing/slash/" which the previous code didn't.</p> disabled compiler optimization, so the binary size bloated a bit. It's back to -Os by default now.</p> -<hr><b>December 15, 2012</b> +<a name="15-12-2012" /><a href="#15-12-2012"><hr><h2><b>December 15, 2012</b></h2></a> <blockquote><p>"The major difference between a thing that might go wrong and a thing that cannot possibly go wrong is that when a thing that cannot possibly go wrong goes wrong it usually turns out to be impossible to get at or repair." @@ -1006,7 +1237,7 @@ to do it Posix's way, which is more brittle and needs extra security checks, but am waiting for somebody to complain first. The default "ulimit -n" is 1024 filehandles, so drilling down over 1000 nested subdirectories).</p> -<hr><b>November 13, 2012</b> +<a name="13-11-2012" /><a href="#13-11-2012"><hr><h2><b>November 13, 2012</b></h2></a> <blockquote><p>"Rule Six: The winning team shall be the first team that wins." - The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.</p></blockquote> @@ -1070,7 +1301,7 @@ a separate <a href=oldnews.html>oldnews</a> page.</p> back now.</p> </span> -<hr><b>July 23, 2012</b> +<a name="23-07-2012" /><a href="#23-07-2012"><hr><h2><b>July 23, 2012</b></h2></a> <blockquote><p>"Ford", Arthur said. "There's an infinite number of monkeys out here who want to talk to us about this script for Hamlet they've worked out." - The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.</p></blockquote> @@ -1095,7 +1326,7 @@ corresponding executable bit wasn't set, and worked around a longstanding glibc bug where static linking prevents stdout from automatically flushing pending output on exit.</p> -<hr><b>June 25, 2012</b> +<a name="25-06-2012" /><a href="#25-06-2012"><hr><h2><b>June 25, 2012</b></h2></a> <blockquote><p>"For a moment, nothing happened. Then, after a second or so, nothing continued to happen." - The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.</p></blockquote> <p><a href=downloads/toybox-0.3.1.tar.bz2>Toybox 0.3.1</a> is based on commit @@ -1111,7 +1342,7 @@ it is. The roadmap and documentation are a bit behind, and I've got ~40 pending submissions to review. I need to catch up...</p> </span> -<hr><b>June 12, 2012</b> +<a name="12-06-2012" /><a href="#12-06-2012"><hr><h2><b>June 12, 2012</b></h2></a> <blockquote><p>"For instance, on the planet Earth, man had always assumed that he was more intelligent than dolphins because he had achieved so much - the wheel, New York, wars and so on - whilst all the dolphins had ever done was @@ -1176,7 +1407,7 @@ yet, but if I wait until everything works we won't have a release before 1.0, so here's a checkpoint.)</p> -<hr><b>March 3, 2012</b> +<a name="03-03-2012" /><a href="#03-03-2012"><hr><h2><b>March 3, 2012</b></h2></a> <blockquote><p>"They went unnoticed at Goonhilly, passed over Cape Canaveral without a blip, and Woomera and Jodrell Bank looked straight through them. @@ -1216,7 +1447,7 @@ dirname, unshare, and various infrastructure tweaks, but it took me 3 months and those guys did their stuff in a week or so.)</p> -<hr><b>February 12, 2012</b> +<a name="12-02-2012" /><a href="#12-02-2012"><hr><h2><b>February 12, 2012</b></h2></a> <blockquote><p> "for though it has many omissions and contains much that is apocryphal, or at least wildly inaccurate, it scores over the older, more pedestrian work in two @@ -1233,7 +1464,8 @@ patches pending on the mailing list I need to review and merge.</p> <p>More to come...</p> <hr> -<p><b>November 15, 2011</b> - Back from the dead, Toybox is now under a 2 +<a name="15-11-2011" /><a href="#15-11-2011"><hr><h2><b>November 15, 2011</b></h2></a> +- Back from the dead, Toybox is now under a 2 clause BSD license, and aiming to become the default command line implementation of Android systems everywhere.</p> |