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RFC Handle conflicting files with Busybox

Yann E. MORIN buildroot 1 version New

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1/2busybox: avoid conflict with other packages+0 -01 reply
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Cover letter [Buildroot] [RFC 0/2] Handle conflicting files with Busybox

Baruch, Thomas, All,

On 2017-12-28 20:01 +0200, Baruch Siach spake thusly:

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On 2017-12-28 18:04 +0100, Thomas Petazzoni spake thusly:

[--SNIP--]

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There is however one remaining debate: my patch series tweaks the Busybox configuration to not build the support for applets for which the functionality is provided by a full-featured program. But Baruch didn't like this tweaking of the Busybox configuration, and would prefer to not install the symlinks, and leave the Busybox configuration unchanged (which means we have lots of Busybox applets built into Busybox that are not really used on the target).

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Do you have an opinion on this specific topic ?

I prefer they be explicitly disabled as you did.

As I said earlier, I don't like this heavy handed modification of the Busybox configuration. I'm not sure how robust this solution would be, as there might be unintended consequences. Kconfig 'select' and 'depends' contribute to that. I prefer to keep config modifications to minimum.

Agreed that the 'select' things in busybox' Kconfig could be an issue. But do we have applets that get select-ed by another?

In current busybox, there is no applet that is select-ed:

    $ git grep -E 'config:[[:space:]]+\<select ' |cut -d : -f 2- |sort -u
    //config:select FEATURE_BZIP2_DECOMPRESS
    //config:se     lect FEATURE_GZIP_DECOMPRESS
    //config:select FEATURE_IP_ADDRESS
    //conf  ig:select FEATURE_IP_LINK
    //config:select FEATURE_IP_NEIGH
    //config:           select FEATURE_IP_ROUTE
    //config:select FEATURE_IP_RULE
    //config:sele       ct FEATURE_IP_TUNNEL
    //config:select FEATURE_SEAMLESS_GZ
    //config:sel        ect FEATURE_SYSLOG
    //config:select LONG_OPTS
    //config:select PLATFORM        _LINUX
    //config:select PLATFORM_LINUX # statfs()
    //config:select PLAT        FORM_LINUX #sysinfo()
    //config:select TLS
    //config:select VOLUMEID

None of those are actual applets.

But OK, there is no guarantee that this will continue to be the case.

As an aside, we currently disable a bunch of Busybox options, of which only three applets: swapon, swapoff, ash.

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First, because this is a security issue that there is dead code: these applets are still usable by calling 'busybox foo' for example, and that is a security issue.

That is no different than the current behaviour.

Indeed not really.

But it's not because we're doing something bad today, that we should pursue in this direction! ;-)

In the end, my preference is still to do as Thomas proposed...

Regards,
Yann E. MORIN.

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