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diff --git a/www/news.html b/www/news.html index 5ef0d3d1..c9bf1236 100755 --- a/www/news.html +++ b/www/news.html @@ -8,6 +8,143 @@ a development environment. See the links on the left for details.</p> <h2>News</h2> +<hr><b>February 25, 2015</b> +<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> + +<p><a href=downloads/toybox-0.5.2.tar.gz>Toybox 0.5.2</a> +(<a href=/hg/toybox/shortlog/1702>commit 1702</a>) is out.</p> + +<p>New promoted commands: sed (finally fixed enough it builds Linux From +Scratch), printf (cleaned up and promoted), shred and +base64 (the Tizen guys wanted them), getenforce, setenforce, and chcon (android), +mix (promoted with fixes from Isaac Dunham), nsenter (from +Andy Lutomirski, merged into unshare).</p> + +<p>Elliott Hughes submited a bunch of patches to support Android (to +both toybox and Bionic libc, which he maintains). On toybox's end this +involved a lot of fixups to portability.[ch] and fixes to over a dozen +commands, plus several new ones. Other portability fixes included working +with buildroot's uclibc fork and building for nommu targets.</p> + +<p>The new "make change" target builds each toybox command as a standalone +binary. Rather a lot of commands that didn't build by themselves (mv depending +on cp and so on) were hit with a large rock until they built standalone. +This involved rewriting bits of option parsing, more elaborate dependency +generation, making each command have its own config +symbol and main() function (even when it's just a wrapper calling another +command's main()), and so on. Also, some commands can't be built standalone +at a conceptual level: "help" describes other enabled commands and "sh" +has a number of bulitin commands (cd, exit, set) that require the +multiplexer infrastructure, so "make change" filters them out.</p> + +<p>The mailing list's web archive is still screwed up. Dreamhost has +been trying to fix it since approximately September. There are +<a href=http://www.mail-archive.com/toybox@lists.landley.net/>two</a> +<a href=http://news.gmane.org/gmane.linux.toybox>other</a> less broken +archives, but neither has quite the same UI as mailman.</p> + +<h3>Bugfixes and tweaks</h3> + +<p>Cynt Rynt sent in tests for ifconfig, +Robert Thompson taught factor to accept whitespace separated arguments, +Hyejin Kim pointed out that some of mktemp's longopts were attached to +the wrong short options, +Luis Felipe Strano Moraes fixed a wrong free() call in bootchartd in pending. +Patches from Ashwini Sharma to make "df /dev/node" work, prevent du from +looping endlessly following symlinks, and to make expr.c +(in pending) understand == and regex matches. (Speaking of expr, it gets +priority groupings wrong but the bug was actually in the posix spec's +HTML conversion. They fixed the posix spec upstream for us. Still need +to fix the expr code, but it's in pending for a reason...)</p> + +<p>Some commands grew new option flags, such as cp --remove-destination +and touch -h.</p> + +<p>The parallel build has better error reporting now. When toybox needs to +re-exec itself to regain suid root permissions and hasn't got the suid bit, +it now gives the right error message ("not root" instead of "no such command"). + +<p>Added a test to "mount" to not mount the same device/directory combination +over itself (the OS catches this for block devices, but not for tmpfs). +Make blkid distinguish ext3 from ext4. Added catv back into cat (because +the Android guys wanted it, and they have historical usage on their side, +so...). Handle nanoseconds in touch.</p> + +<p>Fixed a segfault when CP_MORE was disabled (the resulting option flag list +no longer defined -d but still had it in option groups at the end). +Workaround for glibc redefining dirname() and basename() to random non-posix +semantics because gnu. (They could have created dirname_r() but didn't want +to.)</p> + +<p>Fix an ifconfig test that was preventing assigning an ipv4 address to +interface aliases. Several cleanup passes on hwclock but not quite +promoted out of pending yet.<p> + +<p>Fixed a wrong error message in rm (if you had a chmod 000 directory and +did rm -r on it without -f, after the prompt it would complain it was a +directory, which was not the problem).</p> + +<p>The gzip compression code now does "store only" output to stdout, for +what that's worth.</p> + +<p>Cleanup mountpoint and expand, and remove them from toys/pending/README +(a list of commands that predate the toys/pending directory but needed +another pass).</p> + +<h3>Library and infrastructure:</h3> + +<p>Reworked the option parsing infrastructure so more commands build +standalone (via scripts/single.sh or "make change"). The option flag bit +values are no longer packed, it leaves spaces where currently disabled +flags go, and you can #define FORCE_FLAGS so disabled flags aren't zeroed. +This allows multiple commands to more easily share infrastructure, even if +your current flag context is for a disabled command (switched off in config), +you can force them to stay on and as long as the flags read the same right +to left they'll have the same values.</p> + +<p>We've started removing use of strncpy() because it's a hugely broken +standard C function: the length is the maximum length to _append_, not +the size of the destination buffer. It memsets the remaining space it didn't +copy ala "memset(dest+strlen(dest), 0, len);" so +if you think len is the size of dest you're guaranteed to stomp memory off the +end). And if it runs out of space it won't null terminate because reasons. +(Meanwhile sprintf("%*s", len, str) is counting wide characters in your current +locale, so if you set a locale other than "C" it will also go past your +allocated buffer size. Whoever is maintining the C library standards is really +bad at strings.) +Instead we have xstrncat() which will error_exit() if src+dest+1 doesn't +fit in the buffer. (Because randomly truncating input data isn't necessarily +an improvement.) And there's always xmprintf().</p> + +<p>Similarly, strtol() doesn't return an error indicator on overflow, +you have to clear and then check errno. So new xstrtol() that cares +about overflow.</p> + +<p>The bionic and musl guys agree faccessat(AT_SYMLINK_NOFOLLOW) is not +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> +<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> + +<p>(Neither gives you the convenient historical monthly views of mailman, +but I still have hopes dreamhost will someday figure out what they're doing +wrong. They've only been trying since October. Last month they did a +<a href=http://www.dreamhoststatus.com/2015/01/14/discussion-list-hardware-maintenance/>hardware upgrade to fix a software problem</a>, and the stale +data loads much faster now, so that's something.)</p> + +<p>Update (Feb 19): the archive started updating again, by discarding +all the pending data. So there are now _two_ giant holes in Dreamhost's +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> <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 @@ -18,6 +155,8 @@ on the left.</p> <p>You still subscribe to the list through <a href=http://lists.landley.net/listinfo.cgi/toybox-landley.net>the first link</a>.</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> <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> |