docs/busybox.net/news.html

<!--#include file="header.html" -->


<ul>
  <li><b>23 March, 2007 -- BusyBox 1.5.0 (unstable)</b>
    <p><a href=http://busybox.net/downloads/busybox-1.5.0.tar.bz2>BusyBox 1.5.0</a>.
    (<a href=http://busybox.net/downloads/fixes-1.5.0/>patches</a>)</p>

    <p>Since this is a x.x.0 release, it probably does not deserve "stable"
    label. Please help making 1.5.1 stable by testing 1.5.0.</p>
    <p>Notable changes since previous release:
    <ul>
    <li>find: added support for -user, -not, fixed -mtime, -mmin, -perm
    <li>[de]archivers: merge common logic into one module
    <li>ping[6]: unified code for both
    <li>less: regex search improved
    <li>ash: more readable code, testsuite added
    <li>sed: several very obscure bugs fixed
    <li>chown: -H, -L, -P support (required by POSIX)
    <li>tar: handle (broken) checksums a-la Sun; tar restores mode again
    <li>grep: implement -w, "implement" -a and -I by ignoring them
    <li>cp: more sane behavior when overwriting existing files
    <li>init: stop doing silly things with the console (-400 bytes)
    <li>httpd: make httpd usable for NOMMU CPUs; fix POSTDATA handling bugs
    <li>httpd: run interpreter for configured file extensions in any dir,
        not only in /cgi-bin/
    <li>chrt: new applet
    <li>SELinux: SELinux-related code and -Z option added to several applets,
        new SELinux-specific applets: chcon, runcon.
    <li>Build system: produces link map, uses -Wwrite-strings to catch
        improper usage of string constants.
    <li>Data and bss section usage audited and reduced - should help NOMMU
        targets.
    <li>Applets with bug fixes: gunzip, vi, syslogd, dpkg, ls, adjtimex, resize,
        sv, printf, diff, awk, sort, dpkg, diff, tftp
    <li>Applets with usability improvements: swapon, more, ifup/ifdown, hwclock,
        udhcpd, start_stop_daemon, cmp
    <li>Applets with code cleaned up: telnet, fdisk, fsck_minix, mkfs_minix,
        syslogd, swapon, runsv, svlogd, klogd
    </ul>
    </p>
  </li>

  <li><b>18 March, 2007 -- BusyBox 1.4.2 (stable)</b>
    <p><a href=http://busybox.net/downloads/busybox-1.4.2.tar.bz2>BusyBox 1.4.2</a>.
    </p>

    <p>This release includes only trivial fixes accumulated since 1.4.1.
    </p>
  </li>

  <li><b>25 January, 2007 -- BusyBox 1.4.1 (stable)</b>
    <p><a href=http://busybox.net/downloads/busybox-1.4.1.tar.bz2>BusyBox 1.4.1</a>.
    (<a href=http://busybox.net/downloads/fixes-1.4.1/>patches</a>)</p>

    <p>This release includes only trivial fixes accumulated since 1.4.0.
    </p>
  </li>

  <li><b>20 January, 2007 -- BusyBox 1.4.0 (stable)</b>
    <p><a href=http://busybox.net/downloads/busybox-1.4.0.tar.bz2>BusyBox 1.4.0</a>.
    (<a href=http://busybox.net/downloads/fixes-1.4.0/>patches</a>)</p>

    <p>Since this is a x.x.0 release, it probably is a bit less "stable"
    than usual.</p>
    <p>Changes since previous release:
    <ul>
    <li>e2fsprogs are mostly removed from busybox. Some smaller parts remain,
    the rest of it sits disabled in e2fsprogs/old_e2fsprogs/*, because
    it's too bloated. Really. I'm afraid it's about the only way we can
    ever get e2fsprogs cleaned up.
    <li>less: many improvements. Now can display binary files
    (although I expect it to have trouble with displays where 8bit chars
    don't have 1-to-1 char/glyph relationship). Regexp search is not buggy
    anymore. Less does not read entire input up-front. Reads input
    as it appears (yay!). Works rather nice as man pager. I recommend it
    for general use now.
    <li>IPv6: generic support is in place, many networking applets are
    upgraded to be IPv6 capable. Probably some work remains, but it is
    already much better than what we had previously.
    <li>arp: new applet (thanks to Eric Spakman).
    <li>fakeidentd: non-forking standalone server part was taking ~90%
    of the applet. Factored it out (in fact, rewrote it).
    <li>syslogd: mostly rewritten.
    <li>decompress_unzip, gzip: sanitized a bit.
    <li>sed: better hadling of NULs
    <li>httpd: stop adding our own "Content-type:" to CGI output
    <li>chown: user.grp works again.
    <li>minor bugfixes to: passwd, date, tftp, start_stop_daemon, tar,
    ps, ifupdown, time, su, stty, awk, ping[6], sort,...
    </ul>
    </p>
  </li>

  <li><b>20 January, 2007 -- BusyBox 1.3.2 (stable)</b>
    <p><a href=http://busybox.net/downloads/busybox-1.3.2.tar.bz2>BusyBox 1.3.2</a>.</p>

    <p>This release includes only one trivial fix accumulated since 1.3.1
    </p>
  </li>

  <li><b>27 December, 2006 -- BusyBox 1.3.1 (stable)</b>
    <p><a href=http://busybox.net/downloads/busybox-1.3.1.tar.bz2>BusyBox 1.3.1</a>.
    (<a href=http://busybox.net/downloads/fixes-1.3.1/>patches</a>)</p>

    <p>Closing 2006 with new release. It includes only trivial fixes accumulated since 1.3.0
    </p>
  </li>

  <li><b>14 December, 2006 -- BusyBox 1.3.0 (stable)</b>
    <p><a href=http://busybox.net/downloads/busybox-1.3.0.tar.bz2>BusyBox 1.3.0</a>.
    (<a href=http://busybox.net/downloads/fixes-1.3.0/>patches</a>)</p>

    <p>This release has CONFIG_DESKTOP option which enables features
    needed for busybox usage on desktop machine. For example, find, chmod
    and chown get several less frequently used options, od is significantly
    bigger but matches GNU coreutils, etc. Intended to eventually make
    busybox a viable alternative for "standard" utilities for slightly
    adventurous desktop users.
    <p>Changes since previous release:
    <ul>
    <li>find: taking many more of standard options
    <li>ps: POSIX-compliant -o implemented
    <li>cp: added -s, -l
    <li>grep: added -r, fixed -h
    <li>watch: make it exec child like standard one does (was totally
        incompatible)
    <li>tar: fix limitations which were preventing bbox tar usage
        on big directories: long names and linknames, pax headers
        (Linux kernel tarballs have that). Fixed a number of obscure bugs.
        Raised max file limit (now 64Gb). Security fixes (/../ attacks).
    <li>httpd: added -i (inetd), -f (foreground), support for
        directory indexer CGI (example is included), bugfixes.
    <li>telnetd: fixed/improved IPv6 support, inetd+standalone support,
        other fixes. Useful IPv6 stuff factored out into libbb.
    <li>runit/*: new applets adapted from http://smarden.sunsite.dk/runit/
        (these are my personal favorite small-and-beautiful toys)
    <li>minor bugfixes to: login, dd, mount, umount, chmod, chown, ln, udhcp,
        fdisk, ifconfig, sort, tee, mkswap, wget, insmod.
    </ul>
    <p>Note that GnuPG key used to sign this release is different.
    1.2.2.1 is also signed post-factum now. Sorry for the mess.
    </p>
  </li>

  <li><b>29 October, 2006 -- BusyBox 1.2.2.1 (fix)</b>
    <p><a href=http://busybox.net/downloads/busybox-1.2.2.1.tar.bz2>BusyBox 1.2.2.1</a>.</p>

    <p>Added compile-time warning that static linking against glibc
    produces buggy executables.
  </li>

  <li><b>24 October, 2006 -- BusyBox 1.2.2 (stable)</b>
    <p>It's a bit overdue, but
    <a href=http://busybox.net/downloads/busybox-1.2.2.tar.bz2>here is
    BusyBox 1.2.2</a>.</p>

    <p>This release has dozens of fixes backported from the ongoing development
    branch.  There are a couple of bugfixes to sed, two fixes to documentation
    generation (BusyBox.html shouldn't have USE() macros in it anymore), fix
    umount to report the right errno on failure and to umount block devices by
    name with newer kernels, fix mount to handle symlinks properly, make mdev
    delete device nodes when called for hotplug remove, fix a segfault
    in traceroute, a minor portability fix to md5sum option parsing, a build
    fix for httpd with old gccs, an options parsing tweak to hdparm, make test
    fail gracefully when getgroups() returns -1, fix a race condition in
    modprobe when two instances run at once (hotplug does this), make "tar xf
    foo.tar dir/dir" extract all subdirectories, make our getty initialize the
    terminal more like mingetty, an selinux build fix, an endianness fix in
    ping6, fix for zcip defending addresses, clean up some global variables in
    gzip to save memory, fix sulogin -tNNN, a help text tweak, several warning
    fixes and build fixes, fixup dnsd a bit, and a partridge in a pear tree.</p>

    <p>As <a href=http://lwn.net/Articles/202106/>Linux Weekly News noted</a>,
    this is my (Rob's) last release of BusyBox.  The new maintainer is Denis
    Vlasenko, I'm off to do <a href=http://landley.net/code>other things</a>.
    </p>
  </li>

  <li><b>29 September, 2006 -- New license email address.</b>
    <p>The email address gpl@busybox.net is now the recommended way to contact
    the Software Freedom Law Center to report BusyBox license violations.</p>

  <li><b>31 July 2006 -- BusyBox 1.2.1 (stable)</b>
    <p>Since nobody seems to have objected too loudly over the weekend, I
    might as well point you all at
    <a href="http://busybox.net/downloads/busybox-1.2.1.tar.bz2">Busybox
    1.2.1</a>, a bugfix-only release with no new features.</p>

    <p>It has three shell fixes (two to lash: going "var=value" without
    saying "export" should now work, plus a missing null pointer check, and
    one to ash when redirecting output to a file that fills up.)  Fix three
    embarassing thinkos in the new dmesg command.  Two build tweaks
    (dependencies for the compressed usage messages and running make in the
    libbb subdirectory).  One fix to tar so it can extract git-generated
    tarballs (rather than barfing on the pax extensions).  And a partridge
    in a pear...  Ahem.</p>

    <p>But wait, there's more!  A passwd changing fix so an empty
    gecos field doesn't trigger a false objection that the new passwd contains
    the gecos field.  Make all our setuid() and setgid() calls check the return
    value in case somebody's using per-process resource limits that prevent
    a user from having too many processes (and thus prevent a process from
    switching away from root, in which case the process will now _die_ rather
    than continue with root privileges).  A fix to adduser to make sure that
    /etc/group gets updated.  And a fix to modprobe to look for modules.conf
    in the right place on 2.6 kernels.</p>

  <li><b>30 June 2006 -- BusyBox 1.2.0</b>
    <p>The -devel branch has been stabilized and the result is
    <a href="http://busybox.net/downloads/busybox-1.2.0.tar.bz2">Busybox
    1.2.0</a>.  Lots of stuff changed, I need to work up a decent changelog
    over the weekend.</p>

    <p>I'm still experimenting with how long is best for the development
    cycle, and since we've got some largeish projects queued up I'm going to
    try a longer one.  Expect 1.3.0 in December.  (Expect 1.2.1 any time
    we fix enough bugs. :)</p>

    <p>Update: Here are <a href="http://busybox.net/downloads/busybox-1.2.0.fixes.patch">the first few bug fixes</a> that will go into 1.2.1.</p>

  <li><b>17 May 2006 -- BusyBox 1.1.3 (stable)</b>
    <p><a href="http://busybox.net/downloads/busybox-1.1.3.tar.bz2">BusyBox
    1.1.3</a> is another bugfix release.  It makes passwd use salt, fixes a
    memory freeing bug in ls, fixes "build all sources at once" mode, makes
    mount -a not abort on the first failure, fixes msh so ctrl-c doesn't kill
    background processes, makes patch work with patch hunks that don't have a
    timestamp, make less's text search a lot more robust (the old one could
    segfault), and fixes readlink -f when built against uClibc.</p>

    <p>Expect 1.2.0 sometime next month, which won't be a bugfix release.</p>

  <li><b>10 April 2006 -- BusyBox 1.1.2 (stable)</b>
    <p>You can now download <a href="http://busybox.net/downloads/busybox-1.1.2.tar.bz2">BusyBox 1.1.2</a>, a bug fix release consisting of 11 patches
    backported from the development branch: Some build fixes, several fixes
    for mount and nfsmount, a fix for insmod on big endian systems, a fix for
    find -xdev, and a fix for comm.  Check the file "changelog" in the tarball
    for more info.</p>

    <p>The next new development release (1.2.0) is slated for June.  A 1.1.3
    will be released before then if more bug fixes crop up.  (The new plan is
    to have a 1.x.0 new development release every 3 months, with 1.x.y stable
    bugfix only releases based on that as appropriate.)</p>

  <li><b>27 March 2006 -- Software Freedom Law Center representing BusyBox and uClibc</b>
    <p>One issue Erik Andersen wanted to resolve when handing off BusyBox
    maintainership to Rob Landley was license enforcement.  BusyBox and
    uClibc's existing license enforcement efforts (pro-bono representation
    by Erik's father's law firm, and the
    <a href="http://www.busybox.net/shame.html">Hall of Shame</a>), haven't
    scaled to match the popularity of the projects.  So we put our heads
    together and did the obvious thing: ask Pamela Jones of
    <a href="http://www.groklaw.net">Groklaw</a> for suggestions.  She
    referred us to the fine folks at softwarefreedom.org.</p>

    <p>As a result, we're pleased to announce that the
    <a href="http://www.softwarefreedom.org">Software Freedom Law Center</a>
    has agreed to represent BusyBox and uClibc.  We join a number of other
    free and open source software projects (such as
    <a href="http://lwn.net/Articles/141806/">X.org</a>,
    <a href="http://lwn.net/Articles/135413/">Wine</a>, and
    <a href="http://plone.org/foundation/newsitems/software-freedom-law-center-support/">Plone</a>
    in being represented by a fairly cool bunch of lawyers, which is not a
    phrase you get to use every day.</p>

  <li><b>22 March 2006 -- BusyBox 1.1.1</b>
    <p>The new maintainer is Rob Landley, and the new release is <a href="http://busybox.net/downloads/busybox-1.1.1.tar.bz2">BusyBox 1.1.1</a>.  Expect a "what's new" document in a few days.  (Also, Erik and I have have another announcement pending...)</p>
    <p>Update: Rather than put out an endless stream of 1.1.1.x releases,
    the various small fixes have been collected together into a
    <a href="http://busybox.net/downloads/busybox-1.1.1.fixes.patch">patch</a>,
    and new fixes will be appended to that as needed.  Expect 1.1.2 around
    June.</p>
  </li>
  <li><b>11 January 2006 -- 1.1.0 is out</b>
    <p>The new stable release is
    <a href="http://www.busybox.net/downloads/busybox-1.1.0.tar.bz2">BusyBox
    1.1.0</a>.  It has a number of improvements, including several new applets.
    (It also has <a href="http://www.busybox.net/lists/busybox/2006-January/017733.html">a few rough spots</a>,
    but we're trying out a "release early, release often" strategy to see how
    that works.  Expect 1.1.1 sometime in March.)</p>

    <li><b>Old News</b><p>
    <a href="/oldnews.html">Click here to read older news</a>
    </p>
    </li>


</ul>

<!--#include file="footer.html" -->