Hi Mike ! >... We work hard to make things easy for them. One of the >stumbling blocks our customers have had in the past is how to >configure ntpd to use their internal ntp servers. Helping them >with this usually results in grumbling about it being >overcomplicated to perform what should be such a simple task.
This clearly a failure of your system/distro NOT Busybox. Your build system shall provide a script to read address of your time server from a file and use this address when calling the ntpd daemon applet. So customers can be pointed to changing a line in a file. >isn't added. It's not worth the time or effort for me to edit >your code to add this. I've simply been trying to point out >that catering to your users is the most important thing to do if >you want to keep them from jumping ship. This may be one small >portion of Busybox, but it's one of about 20 that we've already >replaced with full versions for our upcoming release; You are always free to replace Busybox functionality with full versions. Busybox is neither a system nor a build system nor a distro. It is a collection of smaller and simpler counterparts than the usual full GNU and other utilities (Beside that there exist other alternatives). The intention here is to have SMALL binaries using the KISS (keep it simple and small) principle. Adding unnecessary config file functionality without other benefit violates this KISS principle. Everything can be achieved with setting up your right script ... not by the customer, by the system/distro maintainer. >shortcomings in the busybox versions aren't worth the savings in >size in the days of GHz processors and 512MB+ RAM on small cheap >embedded systems. They're not even worth the savings on our >lowest end 200 MHz models; even those have a minimum of 128MB of >RAM. I know ... "640 kByte RAM ought to be enough for everybody" ??? ... think of there are still more small systems out there, e.g. small router boxes with very limited resources. Busybox shall give small and simple tools for most users not a versatile system for your customers. If you use Busybox, make it versatile to your customers by creating right control scripts and system setups including full documentation, and not pointing them around to collect information from other places, e.g. up to date version of Busybox.html from build (not from Web-Page). > I'm just trying to get you to see things from the standpoints > of the people in this chain who've all clamored in favor of > the feature. I don't say you are wrong, but you are at the wrong place to bother. Busybox is not a complete and easy to use system, it is just a collection of small and simple alternatives of other tools. Use it, when you like and build your system with it, but don't add useless code to main binary (for thing easily being achieved by other ways). > ... I'll just use the full version instead and not worry about > it. Fine, you are always free to do this. Depending on kind of system I replace from 30 to 75% of Busybox with full or alternative versions, using Busybox versions as small and fast scripting versions. -- Harald _______________________________________________ busybox mailing list busybox@busybox.net http://lists.busybox.net/mailman/listinfo/busybox
