On Mon, Sep 07, 2026 at 12:25:31PM -0500, Michael Tokarev wrote:
> I think there's no reason to keep building these static versions of
> rescue utilities in 2026, finally. In particular, I'm thinking about
> dropping busybox-static, keeping just the regular busybox binary.
> Do we still need bash-static, e2fsck-static, even zsh-static?
At least for e2fsck-static, it's not that hard to keep building it,
and as a percentage of the size of the full Debian repository, it's
not a big deal. There are still a few specialized use cases, for
example, someone might be using a very old system, which might not
even be a Debian system, and if they need a newer version of e2fsck
with bugs fixed to address some file system corruption that wasn't
handled by the much older version of e2fsck that was shipped with that
ancient system (e.g., debian oldoldoldoldstable :-), it could be handy
for someone in extreme situations.
Of course, in these days when there are gazillions of AI-generated
zero days, it could be argued that keeping those systems around might
be considered professional malpractice, but as long as it's not the
systems managing my local water and electrical utilities, who am I to
judge? :-)
- Ted
