How to get regular stuff working
Basic commands and shell hints
Alpine comes with busybox by default. Busybox is set up as an endpoint for numerous symlinks that substitute various utilities. Though busybox is not that bad, the busybox replacement commands may still be missing some functionality.
To replace the symlinks to busybox, install:
- Shell utilities (things like grep, awk, ls are all busybox symlinks)
- Bash
It's also easy enough to install bash itself:
apk add bash bash-completion
and optionally, change the login shell with chsh.
Disk Management
Managing (removable) disk is much easier with udisks
Installation
apk add udisks2
To see the mounted disks
udisksctl status
Compiling : a few notes and a reminder
Compiling in Alpine may be more challenging because it uses musl-libc instead of glibc. Please review 'The functional differences with glibc' if you think of porting packages or just for the sake of knowing, of course.
Alpine offers the regular compiler stuff like gcc and cmake ... possible others
(unvalidated) apk packages to install so one can start building software
apk add build-base abuild
a complete install for cmake looks like
apk add cmake extra-cmake-modules
ccache is also available
apk add ccache