[prev in list] [next in list] [prev in thread] [next in thread] 

List:       busybox
Subject:    Re: [BusyBox] Anybody working on cpio write support?
From:       Rob Landley <rob () landley ! net>
Date:       2004-06-24 9:21:34
Message-ID: 200406240421.34058.rob () landley ! net
[Download RAW message or body]

On Thursday 24 June 2004 04:04, Glenn McGrath wrote:
> On Thu, 24 Jun 2004 03:33:20 -0500
>
> Rob Landley <rob@landley.net> wrote:
> > I'm fiddling with the 2.6 kernel and trying to get initramfs working,
> > and this requires making a -newc style cpio archive.  There's code in
> > the kernel to do this, but it's got a hard-wired file list.  The
> > busybox cpio command only extracts, it doesn't create.
> >
> > I'm not sure if the logical thing to do is to fix up the busybox code
> > or write a couple of for(readdir()) {} loops for the kernel code...
> >
> > Now what I'm wondering is if there's some common directory traversal
> > code between "find" and "tar" that could be reused for cpio.  (And ar,
> > whenever it sprouts an option for the ability to write...)
>
> At various times ive contemplated creating some common archive creation
> code, but ive never actually done anything.

My busybox to-do list (for post 1.0) is already pretty long.  Lemme see:

Finish bzip2 compression support (I seem to have deleted that directory off my 
laptop accidentally, but I may have a backup and I know I posted a fairly 
recent snapshot to the list a while back, the only thing hard to reproduce 
would be the stripped down version of jseward's version I used to debug 
against, and I could just stick printfs in the original at this point...)

While I'm at it, the "low memory mode" of bzip2 decompress would be good too, 
it's only a few lines.  Incredibly slow, of course...

My sort rewrite so it supports the full SuS3 option set (including -k).  
That's about halfway done, has been for a month or more...

find doesn't support all sorts of stuff (like -exec): even busybox's own "make 
clean" fails with busybox find.

I have a note that the gcc build dies with busybox tail due to no "+" support, 
but that may be obsolete...

Patch needs -i support, and fuzz factor would be nice too.

A gzip and gunzip rewrite is pending, I can make it smaller and all those 
global variables have got to go of we're ever going to allow either command 
to handle more than one file at a time.  (Try "gunzip one.gz two.gz 
three.gz", it's still broken last I checked...)

awk probably needs a fairly extensive rewrite...

Busybox needs a rewritten shell from the ground up: lash/hash/mush/bash/splash 
whatever the heck we've got now is just evil...

Some stuff is missing (diffutils, whereis...)  No ar write support...

I suppose what I could do is just hack together cpio write support (for newc 
style only), and let a common code cleanup occur later...

But now that I've started looking at tar...  Why exactly don't we support -j 
during creation?  I mean, we're shelling _out_ to gzip...  Hmmm...

> Glenn

Rob
-- 
www.linucon.org: Linux Expo and Science Fiction Convention
October 8-10, 2004 in Austin Texas.  (I'm the con chair.)

_______________________________________________
busybox mailing list
busybox@mail.busybox.net
http://codepoet.org/mailman/listinfo/busybox
[prev in list] [next in list] [prev in thread] [next in thread]