In general, POSIX does not define /dev/std{in, out, err} because it
does not want to depend on the dev-filesystem.
For utilities, it thus introduced the '-'-keyword to denote standard
input (and output in some cases) and the programs have to deal with
it accordingly.
Sadly, the design of many tools doesn't allow strict shell-redirections
and many scripts don't even use this feature when possible.
Thus, we made the decision to implement it consistently across all
tools where it makes sense (namely those which read files).
Along the way, I spotted some behavioural bugs in libutil/crypt.c and
others where it was forgotten to fshut the files after use.
sbase - suckless unix tools
===========================
sbase is a collection of unix tools that are inherently portable
across UNIX and UNIX-like systems.
The following tools are implemented:
'#' -> UTF-8 support, '=' -> Implicit UTF-8 support, '*' -> Finished,
'|' -> Audited, 'o' -> POSIX 2013 compliant, 'x' -> Non-POSIX,
'()' -> Petty flag
UTILITY MISSING FLAGS
------- -------------
=*|o basename .
=*|o cal .
=*|o cat .
=*|o chgrp .
=*|o chmod .
=*|o chown .
=*|x chroot .
=*|o cksum .
=*|o cmp .
#*|x cols .
#*|x col .
=*|o comm .
=*|o cp (-i)
=*|x cron .
#*|o cut .
=*|o date .
=*|o dirname .
=*|o du .
=*|o echo .
=*|o env .
#*|o expand .
#*|o expr .
=*|o false .
= find .
#*|o fold .
=* o grep .
=*|o head .
=*|x hostname .
=* o join .
=*|o kill .
=*|o link .
=*|o ln .
=*|o logger .
=*|o logname .
#* o ls (-C, -k, -m, -p, -s, -x)
=*|x md5sum .
=*|o mkdir .
=*|o mkfifo .
=*|x mktemp .
=*|o mv (-i)
=*|o nice .
#*|o nl .
=*|o nohup .
#*|o paste .
=*|x printenv .
#*|o printf .
=*|o pwd .
=*|x readlink .
=*|o renice .
=*|o rm (-i)
=*|o rmdir .
# sed .
=*|x seq .
=*|x setsid .
=*|x sha1sum .
=*|x sha256sum .
=*|x sha512sum .
=*|o sleep .
sort -d, -f, -i
=*|o split .
=*|x sponge .
#*|o strings .
=*|x sync .
=*|o tail .
=*|x tar .
=*|o tee .
=*|o test .
=*|o time .
=*|o touch .
#*|o tr .
=*|o true .
=*|o tty .
=*|o uname .
#*|o unexpand .
=*|o uniq .
=*|o unlink .
=*|o uudecode .
=*|o uuencode .
#*|o wc .
=*|x which .
=*|o xargs (-p)
=*|x yes .
The complement of sbase is ubase[1] which is Linux-specific and
provides all the non-portable tools. Together they are intended to
form a base system similar to busybox but much smaller and suckless.
Building
--------
To build sbase, simply type make. You may have to fiddle with
config.mk depending on your system.
You can also build sbase-box, which generates a single binary
containing all the required tools. You can then symlink the
individual tools to sbase-box or run: make sbase-box-install
Ideally you will want to statically link sbase. If you are on Linux
we recommend using musl-libc[2].
Portability
-----------
sbase has been compiled on a variety of different operating systems,
including Linux, *BSD, OSX, Haiku, Solaris, SCO OpenServer and others.
Various combinations of operating systems and architectures have also
been built.
You can build sbase with gcc, clang, tcc, nwcc and pcc.
[1] http://git.suckless.org/ubase/
[2] http://www.musl-libc.org/