Recipes4Linux
Recipes4Linux
In the GUI tool, the busybox package is listed under the base group. The tool treats this package a little differently than it does the other packages it handles.
Many of the packages listed in the tool have a right arrowhead icon to the left of the package name. This icon indicates there are multiple choices associated with the packages.
With most of the packages that have this right arrowhead icon, if you select the package and then expand the package with the right arrowhead icon, all that gets selected is the base software. You usually have the option of selecting documentation, which usually means your target filesystem will include man pages.
Because of the nature of the busybox package, this default behavior is not really appropriate for busybox. Think of busybox as "a jack of all trades, but master of none". Busybox is one executable that has multiple personalities, depending upon how it was invoked. Without going into all of the gory details, one of the first things it does when executed is check its argv[0] value to determine the name under which it was invoked.
The upside is that a lot of target filesystem functionality can be squeezed into a single executable, which saves disk space. The downside is that the busybox versions of utilities do not usually have the same features and capabilities of the real utilities.
So, if you go the busybox route in the GUI tool, you can't just select the package at the top level. First expand it and you will discover a second right arrowhead icon, labeled links. Expand the links and you will discover all of the personalities that busybox has. With the links expanded, you can individually select the personalities that you want to give busybox in your filesystem.
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