abox

Yet another simple busybox / toybox clone. This one is written in Intel 64-bit assembly language (x86_64) for Linux.

Why?

Because I wanted an excuse to write some modern 64-bit Intel assembly language.

Commands

Currently, the following commands are implemented in some form:

$ abox -l | xargs
basename cat clear echo env false head ln pwd rm seq sleep sync touch true yes

Note:

There is no shell currently - I'm working on it! ;)

Dependencies

Tool	Implementation	Required?	Rationale	Notes
Intel x86_64 Assembler	NASM or YASM	yes ;)
C compiler	GCC or Clang	yes	For linking
Build system	meson and ninja	yes
Make	GNU Make	no	Simplifies building
C unit test framework	check	no (*)		aka libcheck
CLI tests	BATS	no (*)	CLI testing
moreutils package	errno command	yes	Used by abox-util.sh to generate definitions

(*) - The defaults assume these tools are present.

Install dependencies on Fedora like system

$ sudo dnf -y install @development-tools
$ sudo dnf -y install bats check make meson moreutils nasm ninja-build yasm

Install dependencies on Debian / Ubuntu like system

Notes:

• The version of meson provided by Ubuntu is too old, so you need to install a more recent version using pip.

• If you want to run the BATS tests, you will need to be running Ubuntu 22.10 or newer to install bats version 1.5.0+. Alternatively, you can install it manually.

$ sudo apt -y install bats build-essential check errno make nasm ninja-build python3-pip yasm
$ python3 -m pip install meson

Usage

Show help information

$ abox
$ abox help
$ abox -h
$ abox --help

Show available commands

$ abox -l
$ abox --list

Run a command

$ abox echo 'Hello from abox!'

Build

Development build

$ make && make test

Release build

$ make RELEASE=1 && make test

Install

FIXME: / TODO:

• Installing the binary.
• Creating the sym-links.