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1 <!--#include file="header.html" -->
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2
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3 <b><h2>History</h2></b>
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4
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5 <p>I've been working on this project on and off since 1999; it's what
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6 got me into BusyBox and uClibc and compilers and so on. Now it's where I put
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7 together everything else I'm doing (like toybox and the relocatable gcc
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8 wrapper) to see what actually works and give it a good stress-test. (Eating
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9 your own dogfood, and all that.)</p>
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10
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11 <p>When the Firmware Linux project started, busybox applets like sed and sort
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12 weren't powerful enough to handle the "./configure; make; make install" of
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13 packages like binutils or gcc. Busybox was usable in an embedded router or
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14 rescue floppy, but trying to get real work done with it revealed numerous
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15 bugs and limitations. (It hung, it segfaulted, produced the wrong output,
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16 refused to run due to unrecognized command line options... You name it.)</p>
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17
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18 <p>So I spent about 3 years improving Busybox (and pestering other people into
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19 improving their bits), and along the way accidentally become the BusyBox
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20 maintainer (at least until the project's crazy-uncle founder showed up and
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21 <a href=http://lwn.net/Articles/202106/>drove me away again</a>). The result
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22 is that in Firmware Linux, Busybox now functions as an effective replacement
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23 for bzip2, coreutils, diffutils, e2fsprogs, file, findutils, gawk, grep,
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24 inetutils, less, modutils, net-tools, patch, procps, sed, shadow, sysklogd,
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25 sysvinit, tar, util-linux, and vim. I was in the process of writing a new
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26 shell to replace bash with when I left.</p>
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27
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28 <p>Firmware Linux stalled while I was BusyBox maintainer (2005-2006) due to
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29 lack of time, and since that ended most of my spare programming time has gone
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30 into launching toybox. But one of the main goals of toybox is to replace
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31 BusyBox in Firmware Linux, so as toybox matures it'll naturally lead to more
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32 of my time spent working on FWL.</p>
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33
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34 <p>The server behind this website does not currently run on Firmware Linux.
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35 Making it do so is a TODO item. After that, I'd like to get it to the point
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36 where I can use it on my laptop. :)</p>
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37
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38 <p>A snapshot of the old website is <a href=old>available here</a>.</p>
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39
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40 <!--#include file="footer.html" -->
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