6 ms·
Toybox: All-in-one Linux command line
- opan 1y agoIIRC this was made to solve a licensing issue with busybox (toybox being more permissive) and be included with Android. As a fan of copyleft, initially the idea annoyed me, but I eventually came to the conclusion that if it was the only way to include better tools in a particular OS out of the box, it was probably fine. I recall busybox being often used for gpl enforcement, so I wonder now how widespread toybox is by various companies hoping to avoid that. Do modern Smart TVs and such use it?
- GalaxyNova 1y agoI believe most smart TVs use Android as the base, so I would think yes.
- ChocolateGod 1y agoI think Samsung still use Tizen (still Linux, seems to use Toybox) and LG uses WebOS (Linux again, not sure if it uses Toybox).
- 6SixTy 1y agoJust looked through my TV, webOS uses Busybox.
- Imustaskforhelp 1y agoplease teach me how to do this, I have a webos lg tv which is literally not being used because my father used to watch youtube but then youtube almost stopped working on it and there are no more updates and I tried to root it but i couldn't and I just want to use it instead of it being a junk. Any guide on helping me prevent some e-waste at my home. I would prefer to have complete linux access of my lgtv and use something like tiny core linux on my webos tv or something, is something like this possible or?
- planb 1y agoTry https://cani.rootmy.tv/ https://cani.rootmy.tv/
- numpad0 1y agoNormally how you realize your TV runs busybox is by looking at the last parts of the manual, not by just casually sshing into it and running busybox --version.
- KlutzySofa 1y agoIt is however a lot easier to SSH into it. root@lgwebostv:~# busybox BusyBox v1.29.2 (2024-06-12 00:33:13 UTC) multi-call binary.
- BoredPositron 1y agoUse it with a setup box?
- Imustaskforhelp 1y agomy parents bought the "smart" tv a decade ago to switch away from setup box It was kinda expensive at the time, its wild of sorts how cheap of sorts TV's have become right now but still we bought it and its just e-waste right now. I am thinking of setting up a raspberry pi but I am more interested in learning the inner details or how to do things preferably without raspberry pi as well
- BoredPositron 1y agoIt's not e-waste. Your ignorance for the easy solution makes it e-waste. There is nothing to learn from bad embedded systems.
- dgl 1y agoThe license page and linked blog posts mentions this: https://landley.net/toybox/license.html https://landley.net/toybox/license.html I like the 0BSD license (see my https://©.st https://xn--gba.st), AWS also uses the semantically equivalent MIT-0 license for code samples, etc.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- andai 1y agoSee also, for Windows: w64devkit, and the included busybox-w32 https://github.com/skeeto/w64devkit https://github.com/skeeto/w64devkit https://frippery.org/busybox/ https://frippery.org/busybox/
- tredre3 1y agoAlthough I love and use w64devkit myself, it seems like you should point people towards the original busybox rather than take two detours through an unrelated toolkit using an unofficial port of it?
- andai 1y agoI guess? I haven't used Busybox on Windows directly. This is a more complete environment for C/C++ development, which is what I used it for -- i.e. a lightweight alternative to Visual Studio / figuring out how to setup MSYS/mingw and going thru its package manager. (As for MSYS, I somehow ended up with 4 separate installs of it due to each programming language bundling its own version!)
- neilv 1y agoBusyBox got its name from a collection of toys in one assembly/container: https://www.google.com/search?udm=2&q=fisher+price+busy+box https://www.google.com/search?udm=2&q=fisher+price+busy+box
- Denatonium 1y agoI wonder if Toybox got its name from the Soundgarden song of the same name or if it was chosen due to the similarity of Busybox's collection of toys.
- throwaway2046 1y agoI really appreciate Toybox for its clean codebase and permissive license, hopefully it reaches feature parity with Busybox in the future. Version 0.8.13 is long overdue.
- mcswell 1y agoBut what IS it?
- tetris11 1y agoI think... it builds a busybox system based on desired commands (similar to a dockerfile, but using a REPL?). I have to admit that the README is next to useless.
- stonogo 1y agoHow would you improve the description in the readme file? The toybox build produces a multicall binary, a "swiss-army-knife" program that acts differently depending on the name it was called by (cp, mv, cat...). Installing toybox adds symlinks for each command name to the $PATH.
- hamdingers 1y agoThat's a good description but it's odd to put it after ~60 lines of instruction on downloading and building the program. Users may want to know what it is first.
- mrbluecoat 1y agoAddressing the obvious elephant in the room (busybox) is also buried: > I left busybox due to an argument over GPLv3.
- pbhjpbhj 1y agoThat's pretty good. I'd _consider_ flipping it around so the familiar part comes first? Perhaps, something like: «Toybox provides a set of utilities like cp, mv, cat, ..., which are each just links to a single binary (a "multicall binary"). In this way `toybox` is like a Swiss Army knife -- several tools combined into one. Installing toybox adds a symlink for each [of the x] command name[s] to the $PATH.» The last sentence might be better if it said how many symlinks are added? Aside, Busybox uses the term "Swiss Army Knife" in their description. Using the same term like that, which isn't an inherent term, might open you up to a 'passing off' claim. Multi-tool, or EDC, may work?
- csmantle 1y agoI guess it has already been posted in 2021: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28627433 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28627433
- Jotalea 1y agoI can't stop misreading this tool as "Toby Fox". Anyways, I might use this in my own distro for fun.
- userbinator 1y agoAs a contrast, in the DOS world the file COMMAND.COM provided both the shell as well as most of the basic file management commands which would be separate files on Unix-like systems (cp, ls, mkdir, mv, rm, rmdir, etc.); and some specialised DOS-compatible systems had the whole basic OS including the kernel, device drivers, and shell along with its builtins in a single flat-loaded binary.
- flyer23 1y ago[flagged]
- hbffbjnb 1y agoLiterally the first sentence in the readme Toybox: all-in-one Linux command line. I don't know what else you expect? It's common utilities in one executable
- flyer23 1y agoReally? You call that accurate description? I read that and immediatelly thought someone is doing some new Wayland terminal. Compare it to first sentence of BusyBox: BusyBox combines tiny versions of many common UNIX utilities into a single small executable.
- sussmannbaka 1y agoThe actual first sentence of Toybox: Toybox combines many common Linux command line utilities together into a single BSD-licensed executable.
- flyer23 1y agoDo a PR then to this repo and claim the glory, my point states valid until you do it
- sussmannbaka 1y agoNo, it’s literally the first sentence. Not the projects fault that people keep linking the source code repository instead of the website.
- flyer23 1y agoGithub is the project page for developers, why u so stubborn? Are you dev of this thing?
- revanwjy 1y ago[dead]
- M95D 1y agoIt looks to me that busybox is abandoned [1]. Let's hope google money keeps toybox alive. [1]https://lists.busybox.net/pipermail/busybox-cvs/2024-January/041752.html https://lists.busybox.net/pipermail/busybox-cvs/2024-January...
- f33d5173 1y agoThat is by no means the most recent message to the list, I don't see what causes you to claim it's abandoned.
- JdeBP 1y agoI don't understand the deduction, either. But it seems that no BusyBox bug-fixer has spotted an easy-to-fix error that is stopping the BusyBox Bugzilla from working, and causing the hyperlink in that e-mail to lead to an error message that dumps out a glob of SQL and stack trace in black on red. It has a table named groups, and Bugzilla is attempting to use the table without quoting the MySQL keyword. * https://github.com/bugzilla/bugzilla/commit/08679016bd83d2b10bfe47f9e9d45bcae1e9981a https://github.com/bugzilla/bugzilla/commit/08679016bd83d2b1... This bug was fixed in Bugzilla over a year ago. BusyBox's instance of Bugzilla is still exhibiting it today. It makes Buzilla unusable. Thus I do wonder at all of the automated messages to that mailing list with hyperlinks to stuff that does not work. Perhaps no-one is reading the mailing list as well as no-one using the bug tracker.
- M95D 1y agoAnyone can send mails to a mailing list. It doesn't mean anything. busybox.net is down, along with their git and bugzilla, and the github mirror has last commit a year ago. The bugged tc.c was last updated 2 years ago. https://github.com/mirror/busybox/blob/master/networking/tc.c https://github.com/mirror/busybox/blob/master/networking/tc.... So, yes, it looks abandoned.
- f33d5173 1y agoIt might have been down when you checked, but it's working (if slow) now, and the git shows a commit as of 2 days ago. At the time of my comment I checked the mailing list and saw messages marked "patch" or somesuch as of a few months ago.
- westurner 1y agotoybox/library; 0BSD, C: https://github.com/landley/toybox/tree/master/lib https://github.com/landley/toybox/tree/master/lib src/uucore/src/lib/features, findutils, diffutils; MIT, Rust: https://github.com/uutils/coreutils/tree/main/src/uucore/src/lib/features https://github.com/uutils/coreutils/tree/main/src/uucore/src...
- tracker1 1y agoNot sure what this offers above or beyond the rust uutils/coreutils... https://github.com/uutils/coreutils https://github.com/uutils/coreutils