Base2heirloom - ArchWiki

# Base2heirloom

This article or section is a candidate for merging with Heirloom.

Notes: Unmaintained since 2011, what's still relevant should be merged to Heirloom (Discuss)

The base2Heirloom project aims to offer drop-in replacements for various central parts of the Arch linux base system.

Warning: Do not expect 100% drop-in replacement and compatibility. Certain utilities may not exist and for those that do, there may be missing options. One purpose of this Wiki is to document missing features and the problems they cause (in order to device work-arounds). Make sure that the replacement(s) that you install fill your needs before proceeding.

Why change GNU (and other base components) to Heirloom? In contrast to the base2busybox project, the size gain is not as much of a compelling reason. Other reasons could be:

- an interest and devotion to traditional UNIX tools (like fixing oldtimers)
- anti-GNU sentiments
- out of curiosity

## Profiles

The heirloom project mantains several different traditional UNIX variants. To read more about the different profiles, follow this link. Current base2Heirloom packages utilizes Busybox to compensate for missing utilities. Any alternative sources to fill up with missing utilities are however of interest, especially those that fit with the spirit of the Heirloom project.

profile SysV

This is the most traditional variant. Binaries in base2heirloom packages with this profile are taken from /usr/heirloom in the following order:

      bin > bin/posix > bin/ucb

profile posix2001

Binaries in base2heirloom packages with this profile are taken from /usr/heirloom in the following order:

      bin/posix2001 > bin/posix > bin > bin/ucb

profile ucb

In contrast to the other profiles of Heirloom, ucb only represent some added-value from the traditional BSD on another profile. The ucb profile represents the most modern configuration.

Binaries in base2heirloom packages with this profile are taken from /usr/heirloom in the following order:

      bin/ucb > bin/posix2001 > bin/s42 > bin/posix > bin

## gnu2heirloom-coreutils

There are 3 implementations of this replacement: SysV, Posix2001 and UCB.

Busybox

Currently, the gnu2heirloom-coreutils packages need support to offer a drop-in replacement of GNU coreutils. This is at the moment provided by busybox for the following utilities:

       readlink [ base64 hostid md5sum mktemp seq sha1sum stat tac chroot

Missing utilities

Some utilities are not offered by neither Heirloom nor Busybox.

/bin

       dir dircolors shred vdir

/usr/bin

       chcon link nproc pinky ptx runcon sha224sum sha256sum sha384sum sha512sum shuf stdbuf timeout truncate unlink

Category:

- Command shells