[BusyBox] Documentation ideas

[Erik Andersen]

On Sun Jul 15, 2001 at 10:54:04PM -0000, Wendel M. Leibe wrote:
> Hello all,
> 	First I would like to thank all of you for a great product.  I have
> successfully created a small distribution using the busybox executable.
> Over the past week or so I have learned a few things and I would like to try
> to document the steps and things that I have learned to make the process a
> bit easier.  Here are my suggestions.

This sounds great.  Would I think would be great would be if someone
took the Embedded Linux HOWTO document
	http://linux-embedded.com/howto/Embedded-Linux-Howto.html
and updated it and filled in a bunch of details.  I would _love_ that
and I'm sure it would prove amazingly useful.  If you are up to it,
that would be huge...

> 1.  What does everyone think about setting up a make file similar to the one
> used for the Linux kernel.  What I am getting at is the using the menu
> system i.e. xconfig or menuconfig.  The help system with the menu tool is
> great and we can use to convey how much space an option will take up after
> the build is over.  We can also save different configurations and possibly
> have an upgrade path to each next release.

This is already in the plans for the very near future...  Stay tuned... :-)

> 2.  It would be really nice to have the make configuration file for some
> version of the Linux Kernel that has the absolute bare minimum features
> necessary to run busybox.  (One with networking, one without.  One with DHCP
> one without.  etc.)  I for one had to compile the kernel several times
> before I had everything I needed in it.  I figure after we create them we
> can have links so that people can download the one for the Kernel they are
> using.

I'm all for it, though this is really beyond the scope of what busybox
out to be providing.  BusyBox is used for so many wierd things it is very
very hard to anticipate what what sort of kernel might be best...

But some example setups (such as the busybox/bootfloppy dir has, or
buildroot.tar.gz) would be very nice.

> 3.  I was lucky enough to have some documents given to me that explained how
> to set up Lilo on a second HDD that would allow me to create a bootable
> partition on it.  It would be nice if we had a place to document these
> steps.  (rdev... and lilo -r)

I think an updated Embedded Linux HOWTO document could serve this purpose...

> 4.  VMWare  (http:://www.vmware.com) was a great tool to trim the resulting
> system down.  Do any other tools exist that serve the same purpose?  Maybe
> we should mention this tool or an something similar to other users.

I use User Mode Linux (UML) extensively for this sort of thing, and find it to
work wonderfully well (ftp to busybox.net and check out my buildroot.tar.gz
project).  I've used VMWare before and it works nicely.  I find that for Linux
on Linux development though, I prefer UML (and the price is certainly right).
I have an preconfigured copy of UML on busybox.net, which is what I include
with buildroot.tar.gz,

 -Erik

--
Erik B. Andersen   email:  andersen at lineo.com
--This message was written using 73% post-consumer electrons--