The new version of BusyBox 1.30 arrives with new improvements

Recently the BusyBox package was launched in version 1.30 with the implementation of a set of standard UNIX utilities, dIt is designed as a single executable file and optimized for minimal consumption of system resources with a set size of less than 1 MB.

The first version of the new version of BusyBox 1.30 is positioned as unstable, full stabilization will be provided in version 1.30.1, which is expected in about a month.

About BusyBox

BusyBox it is the main tool in the fight against the violation of the GPL in the firmware. Organization Software Freedom Conservancy (SFC) and Software Freedom Law Center (SFLC).

The developers of BusyBox give through the court or by the conclusion of out-of-court settlements repeatedly worked successfully in companies They do not provide access to the source code of the GPL in software.

At the same time, the author of BusyBox strongly opposes such protection, considering that it breaks his business.

For manufacturers who do not want to open the source code of the modified components, in the context of the Toybox project, an analog of BusyBox is being developed, distributed under the BSD license (clause 2). By capabilities, Toybox is still behind BusyBox.

The modular nature of BusyBox makes it possible to form a unified executable file containing an arbitrary set of implemented utilities in the package (each utility is available in the form of a symbolic link to this file).

The size, composition, and functionality of the utility collection may vary depending on the needs and capabilities of the integrated platform for which it is being assembled.

The package is self-sufficient, with a static compilation with uclibc, to create an operating system on top of the Linux Kernel, you just need to create multiple device files in the / dev directory and prepare the configuration files.

About the new version of BusyBox

In this new release of BusyBox 1.30 compared to version 1.29 above, the memory consumption of the typical BusyBox 1.30 assembly increased by 7393 bytes (from 941070 to 948463 bytes).

BusyBox version 1.30 features the "bc" utility for arbitrary math calculations. Based on the new 'bc' code, the 'dc' utility has been reworked and substantially expanded.

El support for the "source-directory" option has been added to the ifupdown utility to place the settings as a set of files in a directory (for example, /etc/network/interfaces.d).

The ash shell provides the ability to embed shell scripts in executable files. The parsing of the expressions "$ {}" is adjusted.

In the command shell, the optimized code was hidden to check the presence of characters in the string, improved handling of the expressions "$ {var # ...}", "$ {var: + ...}" and "$ {var / .... .} "," Set -x "job is close to bash, IFS environment variable setting is provided, ability to run embedded scripts is added.

Of the other improvements that can be highlighted we find:

• Online, added support for autocomplete embedded scripts.
• A function has been added to libarchive to unpack embedded data.
• The '–show SCRIPT' option has been added to the busybox command to display embedded scripts.
• In the awk utility, a graceful shutdown is provided if negative values ​​of the "NF" parameter are specified.
• The behavior of fdisk is aligned with a similar utility from the util-linux 2.31 suite.
• The "-executable" and "-quit" options are added to the search utility;
• During init init, problems with reloading into containers have been resolved.
• Support for domain search has been added to nslookup (search option in resolv.conf).
• Chroot boot mode is added to chpasswd.
• Support for "AUTH PLAIN" authentication mode has been added to sendmail, in addition to "AUTH LOGIN".

How to get BusyBox?

If you are interested in being able to obtain this new version. You can do it by going to the official website of the project where you will find both the source code of this, as well as binaries and documentation.

The link is this.