Busybox learning and research 1: A Brief Introduction to busybox

This is the first time I heard about this stuff. After investigation, I found that this stuff is very good. It is especially applicable to Linux-based embedded systems with strict restrictions on disk space. in addition, this product has been used in many products, such as Nokia 770 and Motorola a780.

What is busybox? Directly reference the author: "busybox combines tiny versions of Common Unix utilities into a single small executable. it provides replacements for most of the utilities You usually find In GNU fileutils, shellutils, etc. the utilities in busybox generally have fewer options than their full-featured GNU cousins; however, the options that are supported provide de the expected functionality and behave very much like their GNU counterparts. busybox provides a fairly complete environment for any small or embedded system. "(from http://www.busybox.net/about.html)

Official website of busybox: http://www.busybox.net/

It is necessary to mention the background of developing busybox. The purpose of busybox development is to create a GNU/Linux boot disk on a m floppy disk, which contains the kernel, device driver, and basic tool software, such as editing text and creating directories. busybox is the basic application software.

For this purpose, you must find a way to streamline the softwareCodeBusybox mainly uses two methods to reduce the amount of code.

(1) only provide the most basic functions of the application. for example, VI only provides simple file editing functions. remove other enhancements. in the original words of the author, the VI provided by busybox is "a small 'vi' clone"

(2) code that shares the same functions between applications. For example, grep and find both need to Recursively search for files in the directory to share the code.

Busybox contains many common applications, such as VI and mkdir. It also provides a script command parser to parse scripts in ash and Bourne shell formats. these applications can be manually configured. You can use make menuconfig to specify the applications you want to include.

This chapter briefly introduces busybox.ArticleIt will detail how to install, configure and use.

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See busybox simplifies embedded Linux systems at the IBM developerworks forum.