Selecting the coreutils package doesn't install all the core utils and there is no way to select which ones to install. It looks like only the binaries listed in the variable, COREUTILS_BIN_PROGS are installed into the target. This came up because I need the coreutils version of base64 since the busybox version doesn't have the -w flag and there doesn't appear to be any elegant way of including that w/o editing the coreutils .mk file.
Can you be more specific? It works here for me: make coreutils && ls -lah target/usr/bin/base64 .. lrwxrwxrwx 1 peko peko 9 May 2 09:16 target/usr/bin/base64 -> coreutils find target -name base64 target/usr/bin/base64
Upon closer inspection it seems what is happening is that when both busybox base64 and coreutils are selected they get installed to different paths. /bin is ahead of /usr/bin in PATH and so the busybox version takes precedent. Adding base64 to COREUTILS_BIN_PROGS causes the coreutils version to be installed in /bin instead of /usr/bin. output/target/usr/bin/base64 -> coreutils output/target/bin/base64 -> busybox
Ahh yes. In general, your best bet is to enable BR2_ROOTFS_MERGED_USR to get rid of this class of issues. With that said, I have pushed a commit adding base64 to _BIN_PROGS. I will also cherry pick it for the next 2019.02.x update.