DOS ain't dead

BSD alternatives to coreutils (Developers)

posted by bocke, 20.01.2014, 15:04

> Just wondering if anyone's considered using some of the BSD alternatives to
> common utilities instead of GNU coreutils and other similar GNU tools.
> From my personal experiences so far, some of the GNU developers don't seem
> too helpful about supporting DOS or other ports or too eager to accept
> patches for them. They seem more concerned with Linux/POSIX systems. Was
> thinking that some of the BSD alternatives are typically less bloated and
> complex than the GNU varieties and might be easier to maintain.
>

I don't think BSD guys care any more. :) And utilites are usually not much simpler and still require POSIX compatibility.

> There's a project called Obase that ports some of the BSD utilities to
> Linux. There are also several BSD licensed Minix utilities that are used
> by embedded systems like Elks. I've been working on porting some of them
> and some of the NetBSD and FreeBSD utilities to Windows. Don't think it
> would be that much harder to add DOS support. Currently have utilities
> like find and xargs working in DOS. I'm also using pkgconf instead of GNU
> pkg-config with djgpp.
>

Well find and xargs are pretty generic utilties. Pkgconf is meant to be used on non-GNU systems anyway, so Windows support was probably pretty much planed in.

Elks utilities are hodge-podge of different utilties from all over the 80's/90's *nix eco-system. Some of it is a "public domain" code posted to Minix newsgroup in 80s, some of it comes from early x86 based BSDs and NET2, some of it is early GNU stuff. Pretty obsolete stuff.

> I think one can find BSD alternatives for most of the coreutils and other
> basic utilities. Some of the other tools I've run across BSD alternatives
> to are gettext/libintl and gzip. I believe libarchive (which includes a
> BSD version of tar) is already available and working on several operating
> systems as well.
>
> Was just wondering if anyone (other than me) would be interested in this
> sort of thing. I'd be interested in discussing the topic with others.

Well, I had a phase when I was interested in porting *nix stuff to DOS. But it proved too easy with DJGPP. :) Honestly most of the users of these forums are technical enough to do that themselves. So I quit messing around and wasting time with something nobody would use.

Well, anyway I doubt BSD utilties are that much lighter. But if you could port the base BSD userspace go for it. If, on the other side, you mean to take a bit from here, a bit from there, making a hodge-podge of "alotasources" that's not worth doing.

About unicode. No, it's not supported. For full unicode support you would have to use graphic mode (like in blocek). Text mode is limited and can have only one subset active at the time.

Complete thread:

• BSD alternatives to coreutils - lmemsm, 19.01.2014, 17:32
  • BSD alternatives to coreutils - RayeR, 19.01.2014, 17:40
  • BSD alternatives to coreutils - Doug, 19.01.2014, 21:42
    • BSD alternatives to coreutils - lmemsm, 20.01.2014, 13:24
  • BSD alternatives to coreutils - bocke, 20.01.2014, 15:04
    • BSD alternatives to coreutils - bocke, 20.01.2014, 16:41
    • BSD alternatives to coreutils - lmemsm, 21.01.2014, 13:59
      • BSD alternatives to coreutils - marcov, 21.01.2014, 15:30
        • BSD alternatives to coreutils - Oso2k, 21.01.2014, 23:01
          • BSD alternatives to coreutils - Ibidem, 22.01.2014, 04:05
        • BSD alternatives to coreutils - bocke, 22.01.2014, 21:26
      • BSD alternatives to coreutils - georgpotthast, 22.01.2014, 08:18
        • BSD alternatives to coreutils - lmemsm, 22.01.2014, 14:33
        • BSD alternatives to coreutils - marcov, 23.01.2014, 21:33
      • BSD alternatives to coreutils - bocke, 22.01.2014, 21:45
        • BSD alternatives to coreutils - lmemsm, 23.01.2014, 23:25
          • BSD alternatives to coreutils - Oso2k, 24.01.2014, 01:28
          • BSD alternatives to coreutils - bocke, 14.02.2014, 02:59