🐝 buzzybox: Portable shell utilities

buzzybox is a multicall binary like busybox that brings a subset of shell utilities to multiple platforms. It can be run as a standalone program (buzzybox) or imported as a library (lesiw.io/buzzybox/hive).

Features

• Written in a memory safe language.
• Uses only Go Project dependencies.
• Compatible with tinygo.
• Open-sourced under a permissive license.

Installation

go install lesiw.io/buzzybox@latest

Usage

Subcommand

echo "hello embedded world" | buzzybox awk '{ print $1, $3 }'

Symlink

ln -s "$(which buzzybox)" awk
echo "hello embedded world" | ./awk '{ print $1, $3 }'

Library

package main

import (
	"strings"

	"lesiw.io/buzzybox/hive"
)

func main() {
	cmd := hive.Command("awk", "{ print $1, $3 }")
	cmd.Stdin = strings.NewReader("hello embedded world")
	cmd.Run()
}

▶️ Run this example on the Go Playground

Docker

echo "hello embedded world" | docker run -i lesiw/buzzybox awk '{ print $1, $3 }'

App criteria for inclusion

One of the following:

1. The app is defined in the POSIX standard.
2. The app isn’t in POSIX, but is found in multiple *nix environments, like MacOS, busybox, and at least one major non-busybox Linux distribution. (tar is a good example of a non-POSIX utility that is near-ubiquitous.)

And all of the following:

1. Orthogonal: the app solves a problem that cannot reasonably be solved by using the existing apps in combination.

Support matrix

App	Linux	Windows	MacOS	TinyGo
arch	✅	✅	✅	✅
awk	✅	✅	✅	✅
base64	✅	✅	✅	✅
basename	✅	✅	✅	✅
cat	✅	✅	✅	✅
false	✅	✅	✅	✅
true	✅	✅	✅	✅