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diff --git a/www/roadmap.html b/www/roadmap.html new file mode 100755 index 00000000..de9e826f --- /dev/null +++ b/www/roadmap.html @@ -0,0 +1,233 @@ +<!--#include file="header.html" --> +<title>Toybox Roadmap</title> + +<h2>Goals and use cases</h2> + +<p>We have several potential use cases for a new set of command line +utilities, and are using those to determine which commands to implement +for Toybox's 1.0 release.</p> + +<p>Our current candidate list combines the commands toybox already implements, +the development environment command list, the toolbox standard commands, +various vendor configurations of busybox, a selected subset of the SUSv4 +standard, a couple of the less-insane bits of LSB, a few outright requests, +plus additional to-be-determined shell functionality.</p> + +<p>See the <a href=status.html>status page</a> for the combined list +and progress towards implementing it.</p> + +<hr /> +<a name="standards"> +<h2>Use case: standards compliance.</h2> + +<h3>POSIX-2008/SUSv4</h3> +<p>The best standards are the kind that describe reality, rather than +attempting to impose a new one. (I.E. a good standard should document, not +legislate.)</p> + +<p>The kind of standards which describe existing reality tend to be approved by +more than one standards body, such ANSI and ISO both approving C. That's why +the IEEE POSIX committee's 2008 standard, the Single Unix Specification version +4, and the Open Group Base Specification edition 7 are all the same standard +from three sources.</p> + +<p>The <a href="http://opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9699919799/idx/utilities.html">"utilities" +section</a> +of these standards is devoted to the unix command line, and are the best such +standard for our purposes. (My earlier work on BusyBox was implemented with +regard to SUSv3, an earlier version of this standard.)</p> + +<h3>Problems with the standard</h3> + +<p>Unfortunately, these standards describe a subset of reality, lacking any +mention of commands such as init, login, or mount required to actually boot a +system. It provides ipcrm and ipcs, but not ipcmk, so you can use System V IPC +resources but not create them.</p> + +<p>These standards also contain a large number of commands that are +inappropriate for toybox to implement in its 1.0 release. (Perhaps some of +these could be reintroduced in later releases, but not now.)</p> + +<p>Starting with the full "utilities" list, we first remove generally obsolete +commands (compess ed ex pr uncompress uccp uustat uux), commands for the +pre-CVS "SCCS" source control system (admin delta get prs rmdel sact sccs unget +val what), fortran support (asa fort77), and batch processing support (batch +qalter qdel qhold qmove qmsg qrerun qrls qselect qsig qstat qsub).</p> + +<p>Some commands are for a compiler toolchain (ar c99 cflow ctags cxref gencat +iconv lex m4 make nm strings strip tsort yacc), which is outside of toybox's +mandate and should be supplied externally. (Again, some of these may be +revisited later, but not for toybox 1.0.)</p> + +<p>Some commands are part of a command shell, and cannot be implemented as +separate executables (alias bg cd command fc fg getopts hash jobs kill read +type ulimit umask unalias wait). These may be revisited as part of a built-in +toybox shell, but are not exported into $PATH via symlinks. (If you fork a +child process and have it "cd" then exit, you've accomplished nothing.)</p> + +<p>A few other commands are judgement calls, providing command-line +internationalization support (iconv locale localedef), System V inter-process +communication (ipcrm ipcs), and cross-tty communication from the minicomputer +days (talk mesg write). The "pax" utility was supplanted by tar, "mailx" is +a command line email client, and "lp" submits files for printing to... what +exactly? (cups?) The standard defines crontab but not crond.</p> + +<p>Removing all of that leaves the following commands, which toybox should +implement:</p> + +<blockquote><b> +<span id=posix> +at awk basename bc cal cat chgrp chmod chown cksum cmp comm cp +csplit cut date dd df diff dirname du echo env expand expr false file find +fold fuser getconf grep head id join kill link ln logger logname ls man +mkdir mkfifo more mv newgrp nice nl nohup od paste patch pathchk printf ps +pwd renice rm rmdir sed sh sleep sort split stty tabs tail tee test time +touch tput tr true tty uname unexpand uniq unlink uudecode uuencode vi wc +who xargs zcat +</span> +</b></blockquote> + +<h3>Linux Standard Base</h3> + +<p>One attempt to supplement POSIX towards an actual usable system was the +Linux Standard Base. Unfortunately, the quality of this "standard" is +fairly low.</p> + +<p>POSIX allowed its standards process to be compromised +by leaving things out, thus allowing IBM mainframes and Windows NT to drive +a truck through the holes and declare themselves compilant. But it means what +they DID standardize tends to be respected.</p> + +<p>The Linux Standard Base's failure mode is different, they respond to +pressure by including special-case crap, such as allowing Red Hat to shoehorn +RPM on the standard even though all sorts of distros (from Debian to Slackware) +don't use it and probably never will. This means anything in the LSB is +at best a suggestion: arbitrary portions of this standard are widely +ignored.</p> + +<p>The LSB does specify a <a href=http://refspecs.linuxfoundation.org/LSB_4.1.0/LSB-Core-generic/LSB-Core-generic/cmdbehav.html>list of command line +utilities</a>:</p> + +<blockquote><b> +ar at awk batch bc chfn chsh col cpio crontab df dmesg du echo egrep +fgrep file fuser gettext grep groupadd groupdel groupmod groups +gunzip gzip hostname install install_initd ipcrm ipcs killall lpr ls +lsb_release m4 md5sum mknod mktemp more mount msgfmt newgrp od passwd +patch pidof remove_initd renice sed sendmail seq sh shutdown su sync +tar umount useradd userdel usermod xargs zcat +</b></blockquote> + +<p>Where posix specifies one of those commands, LSB's deltas tend to be +accomodations for broken tool versions which aren't up to date with the +standard yet. (See <a href=http://refspecs.linuxfoundation.org/LSB_4.1.0/LSB-Core-generic/LSB-Core-generic/more.html>more</a> and <a href=http://refspecs.linuxfoundation.org/LSB_4.1.0/LSB-Core-generic/LSB-Core-generic/xargs.html>xargs</a> +for examples.)</p> + +<p>Since we've already committed to using our own judgement to skip bits of +POSIX, and LSB's "judgement" in this regard is purely bug workarounds to declare +various legacy tool implementations "compliant", this means we're mostly +interested in the set of tools that aren't specified in posix at all.</p> + +<p>Of these, gettext and msgfmt are internationalization, install_initd and +remove_initd aren't present on ubuntu 10.04, lpr is out of scope, and +lsb_release is a distro issue (it's a nice command, but the output of +lsb_release -a is the name and version number of the linux distro you're +running, which toybox doesn't know).</p> + +<p>This leaves:</p> + +<blockquote><b> +<span id=lsb> +chfn chsh dmesg egrep fgrep groupadd groupdel groupmod groups +gunzip gzip hostname install killall md5sum +mknod mktemp mount passwd pidof sendmail seq shutdown +su sync tar umount useradd userdel usermod zcat +</span> +</b></blockquote> + +<hr /> +<a name="dev_env"> +<h2>Use case: provide a self-hosting development environment</h2> + +<p>The following commands are enough to build the Aboriginal Linux development +environment, boot it to a shell prompt, and build Linux From Scratch 6.8 under +it. (Aboriginal Linux currently uses BusyBox for this, thus provides a +drop-in test environment for toybox. We install both implementations side +by side, redirecting the symlinks a command at a time until the older +package is no longer used, and can be removed.)</p> + +<p>This use case includes running init scripts and other shell scripts, running +configure, make, and install in each package, and providing basic command line +facilities such as a text editor. (It does not include a compiler toolchain or +C library, those are outside the scope of this project.)</p> + +<blockquote><b> +<span id=development> +bzcat cat cp dirname echo env patch rmdir sha1sum sleep sort sync +true uname wc which yes zcat +awk basename bzip2 chmod chown cmp cut date dd diff +egrep expr find grep gzip head hostname id install ln ls +mkdir mktemp mv od readlink rm sed sh tail tar touch tr uniq +wget whoami xargs chgrp comm gunzip less logname man split +tee test time bunzip2 chgrp chroot comm cpio dmesg +dnsdomainname ftpd ftpget ftpput gunzip ifconfig init less +logname losetup man mdev mount mountpoint nc pgrep pkill +pwd route split stat switch_root tac umount vi +</span> +</b></blockquote> + +<p>Note: Aboriginal Linux installs bash 2.05b as #!/bin/sh and its scripts +require bash extensions not present in shells such as busybox ash. +This means that toysh needs to supply several bash extensions _and_ work +when called under the name "bash".</p> + +<hr /> +<a name=toolbox> +<h2>Use case: Replacing Android Toolbox</h2> + +<h3>Full toolbox command set</h3> + +<p>Here is the full list of toolbox commands: +</p> +<blockquote><b> +alarm cat chmod chown cmp cp date dd df dmesg getevent getprop hd id ifconfig +iftop insmod ioctl kill ln log ls lsmod mkdir mount mv netstat newfs_msdos notify +pidof printenv ps renice rm rmdir rmmod route schedtop sendevent setconsole +setprop sleep smd start stop sync toolbox top umount vmstat watchprops wipe +</b></blockquote> + +<p>The following Toolbox commands are reasonably standardized:</p> + +<blockquote><b> +<span id=toolbox_std> +cat chmod chown cmp cp date dd df dmesg id ifconfig iftop insmod ioctl ionice +kill ln ls lsmod lsof mkdir mount mv netstat newfs_msdos notify +ps printenv reboot renice rm rmdir rmmod route +sleep start stop sync top umount uptime vmstat +</span> +</b></blockquote> + +<h3>Android-specific commands</h3> +<p>Toolbox also provides the following nonstandard commands, which are unique +to Android (or at least do not appear in Ubuntu or SUSv4):</p> + +<blockquote><b> +<span id=toolbox> +alarm hd getevent getprop ioctl log nandread notify +r schedtop sendevent setconsole setprop smd watchprops wipe +</span> +</b></blockquote> + +<hr /> +<h2>Requests:</h2> + +<p>The following additional commands have been requested by various users:</p> +<blockquote><b> +<span id=request> +freeramdisk getty halt hexdump hwclock klogd modprobe ping ping6 pivot_root +poweroff sfdisk sudo syslogd taskset telnet telnetd tracepath traceroute unzip +usleep vconfig zip free login modinfo unshare netcat help +</span> +</b></blockquote> + +<!-- #include "footer.html" --> + diff --git a/www/status.html b/www/status.html index c987cccb..65d948e0 100755 --- a/www/status.html +++ b/www/status.html @@ -3,7 +3,7 @@ <h1>How are we doing on implementing stuff so far?</h1> -<p>Legend: {android} [posix] (development) <lsb> <strike>implemented</strike></p> +<p>Legend: {android} [posix] (development) <lsb> other <strike>implemented</strike></p> <!--#include file="status.gen" --> |