[BusyBox] tinylogin

[Erik Andersen]

On Sun Aug 19, 2001 at 02:43:53AM +0200, Per Wigren wrote:
> Hi!
> 
> Why isn't tinylogin integrated into busybox? Wouldn't it save a whole bunch 
> of bytes to have it integrated instead of separate?

There are several reasons.

    1) tinylogin has to be linked vs libcrypt.  BusyBox has made it
	policy that it only links vs libc.
    2) tinylogin requires the setuid bit in order for things like 'su'
	to work.  BusyBox has never been (and will never be IMHO) properly
	audited for security holes, so setting the setuid bit on busybox
	would be extremely unwise.
    3) tinylogin started life as a separate project, and I havn't messed
	with merging it, since it didn't seem necessary.

That said, there is some benefit to be had by merging tinylogin.  For
example, right now tinylogin's utility.c and busybox's libbb are
redundant -- there are a number of functions in libbb that have been
improved while the ones in tinylogin havn't been.

So... the only way I can think of to improve the current situation is to
merge tinylogin into the busybox source tree, but still have it produce
a separate binary.

 -Erik

--
Erik B. Andersen   email:  andersen at lineo.com
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