I recently became curious as to what GNU tools ship with NetBSD and whether there are tools to replace them. I have known about the heirloom project for a little while and it seems this may serve to replace most of the GNU Coreutils. But I wonder, is this the best option and is there a way to make NetBSD completely free of GNU software?

pfr This sounds rather messy to achieve and the question is, why? I'm not really sure about the origin of all the tools in the base system but, at least the base compiler is gcc . Sure you can install and build stuff using clang , I know some people do it but, gcc will still be around in your system. Honestly, I don't see the point of being gnu-free . But, if that's what you want, the easiest way, as I see it, is Alpine. Still, you'd need to recompile the Linux kernel with clang , as the default on the install image is compiled with gcc . But, that's all there's from gnu on Alpine, the core utils are provided by busybox . The question remains, though. Why?

GNU replacement tools

neubaer

pfr Is there a particular problem you're trying to solve? Knowing exactly which GNU/programs grind your gears makes it easier to recommend stuff.

As for Heirloom, the website hasn't been updated in 11 years, and the last update I've seen is heirloom mailx from 2008.
Now, that's the official website and project on SourceForge. I've found a couple of forks on Github, but they too have very sporadic updates with years-long gaps.
I'm not the one to dismiss things outright, but Heirloom does seem to be pining for the fjords.

pin on Alpine, the core utils are provided by busybox

Busybox is licensed under GPL, though. There's an alternative called Toybox, which is heavily used by Android, but it's somewhat lighter on features, still.

neubaer Busybox is licensed under GPL, though.

Guess one could also use oasis in that case.

neubaer

pin Thanks for the link. That looks like a really interesting project, except I don't get the preoccupation with static linking. Anyway, it's relevant for me as I'm attempting something similar: fitting a live system into a ~50 MB business card CD-R that I've acquired for novelty purposes.

nia

grep, gettext, groff, texinfo, cvs, rcs, gcc, binutils are the big gnu things left.

replacing gnu grep and its many extensions in a compatible yet efficient way is hard. bsdgrep comes close but iirc is still lacking in performance. heirloom toolchest does not come close.

we need groff for building the installation notes and /usr/share/doc, it isn't needed for any man pages, where mandoc is used happily. not a big deal. part of the remit of netbsd is replicating the full CSRG distribution, including things like the berkeley vi tutorial. probably you do not have the same goals.

you can easily make netbsd build with clang instead of gcc, that is documented widely.

elftoolchain comes about 1/4 way to replacing binutils with a non gnu license.

texinfo, cvs, rcs you can probably happily purge

note that most of the GNU tools in netbsd (gettext, grep, etc) are the pre-GPLv3 versions

JuvenalUrbino

nia we need groff for building the installation notes and /usr/share/doc, it isn't needed for any man pages, where mandoc is used happily.

This is something curious I didn't know; cool!

JuvenalUrbino

pfr replace most of the GNU Coreutils

Most POSIX commands in NetBSD are not provided by GNU coreutils, they rather derive from the respective 4.4BSD-lite version and have been in base forever.

pin The question remains, though. Why?

Precisely. To be honest I can't really see why anybody should care a bout replacing GPLed code in base, this is unless they plan on distributing some proprietary commercial product based on BSD (e.g. Apple replacing bash with zsh as system interpreter, if memory serves me right)

nia

JuvenalUrbino i think this is also why it is part of the "text" set rather than "base".

rvp

pfr is there a way to make NetBSD completely free of GNU software?

Well, even if, for some reason, you got rid of everything GNU, you'll stll have gcc left.
My advice to @pfr is to give up on this quixotic quest of his.

rvp My advice to @Ramiferous is to give up on this quixotic quest of his.

🤗

Jay

rvp unless @pfr is Batman/Batwoman 😅

nia

heh, replacing gcc (on x86) is the easy part

JuvenalUrbino

nia heh, replacing gcc (on x86) is the easy part

I remember when pkgsrc would let me build packages on Solaris 10 using SUNPro. That was a great time 🙂
edit: I wonder if Joyent's pkgsrc binaries for macOS are compiled with LLVM

nia

JuvenalUrbino Yeah. https://mail-index.netbsd.org/pkgsrc-bulk/2021/03/14/msg020585.html

pfr

Thanks for all the replies. I have no real gripe with GNU, but I guess it was just curiosity as I was looking at both Alpine & Oasis which are both interesting projects.

I'll give up my quest on this one I suppose 😆

Jay

pfr never give up. My dream is to be Hokage 😜

rvp

pfr I'll give up my quest on this one I suppose

I should've been more careful in my initial reading of this. I assumed you meant. "What can we do to rid NetBSD of all GNU stuff", when I should've read it as: "What can I do to get rid of the GNU on my machine". In which case, it's not that quixotic of a quest. Taking @nia's list, there are replacements possible:

grep: plenty of performant replacements written in Rust on github. (not sure if they take the same switches, etc.)
gettest: purge
texinfo: purge
groff: purge (most docs already come with the plain-text and .ps versions)
cvs/rcs: ??? (only of interest to developers)
binutils: use clang tools? (ld.lld, llvm-ar, ...) ( " )
gcc: clang, pcc ( " )

nia

It actually isn't possible to build the linux kernel with clang IIRC, reliably. So gnu-free linux is some way off from a toolchain perspective, but most Linux distributions don't ship a toolchain as a core part of the OS like the BSDs do (and like POSIX specifies).

nia Nearly, https://lwn.net/Articles/734071/

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=NMQrnVDf-rY

neubaer

nia I've been building my own Linux kernel with clang for some time now. These days it's as easy as passing USE_LLVM=1 to make. (That uses the whole LLVM toolchain actually.)

pfr

rvp I should've been more careful in my initial reading of this. I assumed you meant. "What can we do to rid NetBSD of all GNU stuff", when I should've read it as: "What can I do to get rid of the GNU on my machine".

This is what I meant, yes.

While not anywhere near as feature ritch as sed or awk, I've been fond of sd as a simple find & replace tool.

rvp groff: purge (most docs already come with the plain-text and .ps versions)

I quite like using groff, in fact I've used it to write several documents recently, including my resume.
I've been looking at neatroff as a replacement.

rvp

pfr I quite like using groff, in fact I've used it to write several documents recently, including my resume.

Colour me impressed! Macro package or straight troff?