[Toybox] bionic?

[Rob Landley]

On 11/2/20 6:34 PM, scsijon wrote:
> Date: Mon, 2 Nov 2020 11:55:01 -0800
>> From: enh <enh at google.com>
>> To: Rob Landley <rob at landley.net>
>> Cc: toybox <toybox at lists.landley.net>
>> Subject: Re: [Toybox] [PATCH] Make it easier to switch regex
>>     implementations.
>> Message-ID:
>>     <CAJgzZopFOyG=nvBVwexX1xDSgA_cq_S=R0puYz7fUwAa1CGV_g at mail.gmail.com>
>> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="UTF-8"
>>
>> On Fri, Oct 30, 2020 at 7:12 PM Rob Landley <rob at landley.net> wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>> On 10/28/20 7:06 PM, enh via Toybox wrote:
>>>> One reason to use toybox on the host is to get the same behavior across
>>>> Android/Linux/macOS. Unfortunately (as we've seen from a few bugs) one
>>>> area where that doesn't quite work is that toybox uses the libc regular
>>>> expression implementation.
>>> Which another reason the version of toybox you distribute should be statically
>>> linked against bionic.
>> aye, but "host bionic" is a longer project with no-one funded to work on it.
> 
> ?Just out of curiousity, just what is 'bionic', and why is it so special that
> toybox should be forced to provide a specific version for it?

It's Android's libc. Elliott maintains it. I thought I covered this in the FAQ?
https://landley.net/toybox/faq.html#cross says:

  3) llvm+bionic = Android NDK

  The Android Native Development Kit provides an llvm toolchain with the bionic
  libc used by Android.

And https://landley.net/toybox/faq.html#opensource also says Elliott maintains
bionic.

> Especially, when as you say, it's not a funded project!

Bionic has numerous full-time Android engineers poke at it on a regular basis,
what isn't funded is porting Android's libc to use on vanilla Linux instead of
as part of Android.

> I've come across the name (mainly here) a few times now, but as as far as I
> know, I don't use it or need it, so i've ignored it until now, considering it to
> be one of the esoteric breeds.

Android phones have been a thing for a dozen years now. That whole "billion with
a B units per year" thing I keep going on about?

Rob