Busybox 1.37 is tiny but capable, the way we like Linux tools to be (go.theregister.com)

submitted 2 months ago by andrew_s@piefed.social to c/opensource@lemmy.ml

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The Busybox developers have released version 1.37.0, with some 50 changes.

Its developers call Busybox the "Swiss Army knife" of embedded Linux, because in one relatively small tool, it implements not just a Unix-style shell, but also about 300 different commands that are normally external programs in their own right. As a result, it's often found inside devices that use Linux in very resource-constrained environments, such as consumer firewall/routers.

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[-] Masterkraft0r@discuss.tchncs.de 26 points 2 months ago

"Noooooooo! One tool should do one thing and one thing only! Blasphemy! Heresy! Anthema! Systemd!" crying in unix design philosophy

[-] Magister@lemmy.world 7 points 2 months ago

yeahs systemd I know yada yada :)

But working with embedded stuff, sometimes MCU with like 8MB embedded flash, have a 512k uboot, 1.5MB kernel, you are left with 6MB of flash for the whole application and lib, and busybox is a savior here!

[-] Masterkraft0r@discuss.tchncs.de 1 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

it was a joke xD i like busybox (and systemd) i don't particularly subscribe to the unix way, but to each their own ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[-] MotoAsh@lemmy.world 2 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

IMO, "One app/library/etc does one thing only" is a rather ignorant form of wisdom about encapsulation, anyways.

Encapsulation is important regardless of how many disparate tasks a library handles. Doing one thing with one thing is a pretty good rule of thumb to get close to good results, but it is FAR from a golden standard, and serves to drag people away from the finer nuances of encapsulation.

The ONLY time it is a hard and fast rule is at the individual function level. A single function ideally should have one task to accomplish, even if that task has side effects.

I'm sure there are cross-dependency issues on an OS level that makes it a bit wiser to do for widely used system tasks, but to make it an absolute rule smacks of wisdom gone awry. Like not eating shellfish in the bible.