HyperForum — Busybox

Re: Busybox

null@example.com (schilling.klaus) — Wed, 29 Jan 2025 13:30:40 +0000

It is too easy to confuse mdevd and mdev in either reading or writing. This must have occurred occasionally on irc or in the forums.

So it is mdevd, not mdev -d, which is researched as a possible replacement for udev. Therefore, previously mentioned skalibs by Bercot is back in the business... but I will look into smdev and its dependencies.

Busybox may still be useful for custom chroots, initram environments, and rescue discs; but anyone doing such a thing will necessarily know what to do and then be able to build an individually configured busybox from upstream sources, so that a pre-built package for busybox makes no sense.

Re: Busybox

null@example.com (throgh) — Wed, 29 Jan 2025 10:25:14 +0000

So far not for the mdevd implementation. There is also no busybox planned for implementation.

Please look here: https://skarnet.org/software/mdevd/

(...)
Independence from busybox: mdev is part of the busybox software. It is an advantage when busybox is also used to provide other functionality, such as coreutils or util-linux equivalents. However, most distributions find that functionality lacking in compatibility (for instance, the busybox implementation of POSIX utilities is often non-conformant), and choose to use alternatives to busybox instead. In that case, having to use the whole busybox configuration and build process just for mdev is a drawback, and the code that gets included in the mdev binary is bigger than it needs to be. mdevd, on the other hand, is independent software, and building it is simple and does not pull in any unnecessary code.
(...)

The fact about busybox was already part of the research and there was and is already the decision that we do not include busybox.

Busybox

null@example.com (schilling.klaus) — Wed, 29 Jan 2025 09:00:29 +0000

In order to use mdev as a replacement for udev, busybox is required.
We do not have that yet, and there are quite a lot of configuration options.

Busybox can become drag-in ware, as is best seen in the case of Alpine Linux, where it provides almost the entire core userland. This is probably not desired for Hyperbola Linux (the "gnu" part would be inappropriate for an alpine-like distro).

For packaging busybox, it must be decided which subprogrammes of busybox are to be included or excluded. That is so difficult to decide, for many subprogrammes may be useful for some and then even preferred over the GNU alternative, but others might break building or running other packages or configurations made by users.

So, if mdev is decided to be the wa to replace udev, there should be some agreed guidelines for packaging busybox.