Slashdot Mirror

Sam Lowry writes "In a recent post at his livejournal, Ulrich Drepper criticizes the LSB standard and urges the distributions to drop it." It's an interesting piece; Ulrich raises some good points.

nickstoughton writes "The Linux Standard Base (LSB) project is holding its annual plenary meeting next week, Aug 8, in San Francisco, to coincide with LWE. The meeting is open to all, and the workgroup is seeking feedback on the next direction to take now that LSB 3.0 is out. But ... you must sign-up in advance since the meeting is to be held in IBM's San Francisco offices, and building securuty needs to know names for badges. At very least, this should be an opportunity to grill the developers of the standard as to why it is the way it is, what's happening with the ISO verion of the LSB, etc. If you are planning on going to Linux World Expo in San Franciso, this is worth adding to your itinerary!" Note that the room only holds 55 people, though!

mydoghasworms asks: "I have done much thinking lately about Linux Standards Base. The idea makes lots of sense: Adopt a standard which will ensure that if some piece of software is compiled on one LSB-compliant system, it will run on any other LSB-compliant system. This would be great for members of the general public who are looking for an alternative to Windows, don't want to pay for Mac, but are looking for a platform where installing and running software is as easy as on the platform they are used to. Seen in that light, if LSB lives up to its promise, it could be the step in Linux's evolution that could see it adopted by the general public. That leaves the question: Why is LSB not seeing greater adoption?" "Is it because it is not marketed well enough? Is the certification process too difficult? Are there perhaps technical challenges to LSB certification not often discussed? If people agree that LSB is in fact what Linux needs right now to ensure widespread adoption, what should be done to create awareness of LSB? Should communities developing Open Source/Free Software projects be encouraged to provide LSB binaries? Your input would be most welcome here."

mcneil@freestandards says: "The LSB has been submitted to ISO/IEEE for an ISO imprimatur. While this is not really new news, it is important that every Linux user get involved to make sure their country votes YES for Linux ISO standardization! With Linux achieving international standards recognition it will be that much easier for governments and other risk adverse organizations to include Linux in their procurement policies. This of course will further the normalization of free and open source software, lessen the world's reliance on sucky legacy platforms, etc. etc."

r3lody (Ray Lodato) writes "Just because Linux is under the GPL, some people believe that it's pretty standardized. Actually, each distro has its own little additions and, consequently, quirks. Writing an application to work reliably under all variations is not a slam-dunk. The Linux Standard Base Specification seeks to provide the common ground that all Linux apps should adhere to, and therefore make reasonably sure that they will work as advertised. Building Applications with the Linux Standard Base is a reference manual for application developers to make sure their programs will work across the Linux map." Read on for the rest of Lodato's review. Building Applications with the Linux Standard Base author Core Members of the Linux Standard Base Team pages 246 publisher Pearson plc publishing as IBM Press rating 8 reviewer Ray Lodato (rlodato AT yahoo DOT com) ISBN 0131456954 summary Very dry reading, but a lot of useful information packed into a slim 246 pages.

I've been involved with IBM products and documentation since the late '70s, and their documentation has traditionally come in two flavors: user's guides, and reference manuals. The former are meant to be read cover-to-cover (more or less), and the latter are meant to be looked at for specific bits of information. This book falls more to the reference manual side of the spectrum. Consequently, reading it cover-to-cover was a little dry, but the information needed to get an application certified with the Linux Standard Base (LSB) was clearly laid out.

Building Applications with the Linux Standard Base (published by IBM Press and available on your favorite bookstore sites) is laid out in five large parts: Introduction, Developing LSB Applications, Certifying for the LSB, Contributing to the LSB Project, and Using LSB Resources. Except for the first part (Introduction), the book gives specific examples, and many, many references to the opengroup.org website's sections on the LSB.

It becomes obvious as you go through the book that the Linux Standard Base is still evolving. The authors (13 core members of the LSB team) frequently allude to how the project can (and should) be extended to increase its scope and sophistication. Two chapters (Adding New Interfaces..., and Adding New Architectures...) cover (albeit skimpily) what's needed to update the specification.

Backing up for a moment, Part II (Developing LSB Applications) describes in detail (with examples) the Dos and Don'ts of coding practices. It then explains carefully how an application should be packaged for distribution (RPM), and finally wraps up with a section on porting Solaris apps to the LSB. In each chapter, step-by-step instructions are given when appropriate. Differences in filesystem hierarchy, signal handling, and program options are all laid out to help you through.

Part III goes over the LSB Certification process. Both runtime environments (distros) and applications are covered. Again, the book lays out the process in a step-by-step approach.

The last part in the book talks about the various resources available: the written spec, the test suites, and various usage guides. The chapter on using the LSB test suites shows how much thought went into making sure a successful test ensures a certifiable (in a good way) application.

All in all, Building Applications with the Linux Standard Base, has what you need if you're developing a commercial-grade Linux distribution or application. Once your product has passed the testing described inside, you can be confident that it will work on almost anything Linux. Very dry reading, but a lot of useful information packed into a slim 246 pages. I'd give it a 7 for writing style, but a 9 for content: total=8/10.

You can purchase Building Applications with the Linux Standard Base from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, carefully read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.

querencia writes "Sun has announced that Solaris 10 will comply with the Linux Standard Base specification, thus allowing Linux apps to run unchanged on Solaris. This isn't emulation -- they claim that it is 'kernel-integrated and supported as an operating system feature.' While I appreciate the benefits of the Solaris OS, I've considered them on the losing end of the battle until now. Will the power of Linux apps put Solaris back into the running?" Update: 08/04 15:50 GMT by J : At OSCON, Sun reaffirmed that Solaris 10 will be open-sourced. They said it would be one of the OSI licenses, not sure which yet; that this was approved at the highest levels of the company; and (with the expected "we're just guessing" language), it could happen as soon as year's end.

JayBonci writes "According to a message sent to debian-vote, there is now a GR on the table as to whether or not to include AMD64 into the upcoming sarge release, even though it violates part of the LSB (Linux Standards Base). The debian-vote list has more discussion on it. Does this best meet the needs of the users?"

An anonymous reader writes "The OpenGroup has published a detailed list of the conflicts between the Linux Standards Base and Posix ^? that is accessible through their website. "

YOU ARE SO FIRED! writes "In an effort to conform to the LSB standards, Gentoo Linux will be adopting RPM as the standard form of package management in portage 2.1. More information can be found in the Gentoo weekly newsletter. I'd surely be fired if I would've proposed such an idea!"

George Kraft (gk4) writes "The LSB is announcing its intention to add PPC32 and IA64 architectures to its certification program; therefore, the workgroup is launching a Certification Pilot for PPC32 and IA64 architectures to evaluate the LSB's runtime conformance test suites. The pilot will continue until Friday December 13th, 2002. This will give Linux distributions and hardware vendors time to evaluate, comment, and get prepared before certification begins in 1Q03. Currently there are seven IA32 Linux releases from four distributions which are LSB v1.2 Certified." Also, "The LSB workgroup has just released for public review its latest LSB v1.3 draft of the generic written specification and for IA32, PPC32, and IA64. The workgroup is soliciting comments from the community until Friday November 8th. (Read on below for details on these changes.)

Specifically, regarding the gLSB, several interfaces were changed either to or from the LSB as the guiding specification based on issues which were raised with the LSB 1.2. The new reference more accurately describes these interfaces. Several interfaces were incorporated from the Li18nux 2000 Specification to better support Internationalization and localization. The descriptions of interfaces defined by the LSB have been clarified and improved overall. The data definitions are more complete now. Some duplications were eliminated and some omissions have been included. Below are details of some of the changes:

New Interfaces

touchline touchwin __isinf __isinff __isinfl __isnan __isnanf __isnanl asprintf freeaddrinfo gai_strerror getaddrinfo getgrgid_r getgrnam_r getnameinfo inet_ntop inet_pton isinff ngettext statvfs64 tdelete pam_acct_mgmt pam_authenticate pam_chauthtok pam_close_session pam_end pam_fail_delay pam_get_item pam_getenvlist pam_open_session pam_set_item pam_setcred pam_start pam_strerror _Unwind_DeleteException _Unwind_Find_FDE _Unwind_ForcedUnwind _Unwind_GetDataRelBase _Unwind_GetGR _Unwind_GetIP _Unwind_GetLanguageSpecificData _Unwind_GetRegionStart _Unwind_GetTextRelBase _Unwind_RaiseException _Unwind_Resume _Unwind_SetGR _Unwind_SetIP, and socket ioctl() commands

Deprecated Interfaces

__dcgettext alphasort alphasort64 endhostent fstatfs fstatfs64 gets sethostent setmntent statfs statfs64 waitid

New Libraries

libgcc_s (Unwind interfaces) libpam

New Specifications

RPM File Format

New ELF Section

.jcr

George Kraft (gk4) writes "The LSB is announcing its intention to add PPC32 and IA64 architectures to its certification program; therefore, the workgroup is launching a Certification Pilot for PPC32 and IA64 architectures to evaluate the LSB's runtime conformance test suites. The pilot will continue until Friday December 13th, 2002. This will give Linux distributions and hardware vendors time to evaluate, comment, and get prepared before certification begins in 1Q03. Currently there are seven IA32 Linux releases from four distributions which are LSB v1.2 Certified." Also, "The LSB workgroup has just released for public review its latest LSB v1.3 draft of the generic written specification and for IA32, PPC32, and IA64. The workgroup is soliciting comments from the community until Friday November 8th. (Read on below for details on these changes.)

Specifically, regarding the gLSB, several interfaces were changed either to or from the LSB as the guiding specification based on issues which were raised with the LSB 1.2. The new reference more accurately describes these interfaces. Several interfaces were incorporated from the Li18nux 2000 Specification to better support Internationalization and localization. The descriptions of interfaces defined by the LSB have been clarified and improved overall. The data definitions are more complete now. Some duplications were eliminated and some omissions have been included. Below are details of some of the changes:

New Interfaces

touchline touchwin __isinf __isinff __isinfl __isnan __isnanf __isnanl asprintf freeaddrinfo gai_strerror getaddrinfo getgrgid_r getgrnam_r getnameinfo inet_ntop inet_pton isinff ngettext statvfs64 tdelete pam_acct_mgmt pam_authenticate pam_chauthtok pam_close_session pam_end pam_fail_delay pam_get_item pam_getenvlist pam_open_session pam_set_item pam_setcred pam_start pam_strerror _Unwind_DeleteException _Unwind_Find_FDE _Unwind_ForcedUnwind _Unwind_GetDataRelBase _Unwind_GetGR _Unwind_GetIP _Unwind_GetLanguageSpecificData _Unwind_GetRegionStart _Unwind_GetTextRelBase _Unwind_RaiseException _Unwind_Resume _Unwind_SetGR _Unwind_SetIP, and socket ioctl() commands

Deprecated Interfaces

__dcgettext alphasort alphasort64 endhostent fstatfs fstatfs64 gets sethostent setmntent statfs statfs64 waitid

New Libraries

libgcc_s (Unwind interfaces) libpam

New Specifications

RPM File Format

New ELF Section

.jcr

George Kraft (gk4) writes "The LSB is announcing its intention to add PPC32 and IA64 architectures to its certification program; therefore, the workgroup is launching a Certification Pilot for PPC32 and IA64 architectures to evaluate the LSB's runtime conformance test suites. The pilot will continue until Friday December 13th, 2002. This will give Linux distributions and hardware vendors time to evaluate, comment, and get prepared before certification begins in 1Q03. Currently there are seven IA32 Linux releases from four distributions which are LSB v1.2 Certified." Also, "The LSB workgroup has just released for public review its latest LSB v1.3 draft of the generic written specification and for IA32, PPC32, and IA64. The workgroup is soliciting comments from the community until Friday November 8th. (Read on below for details on these changes.)

Specifically, regarding the gLSB, several interfaces were changed either to or from the LSB as the guiding specification based on issues which were raised with the LSB 1.2. The new reference more accurately describes these interfaces. Several interfaces were incorporated from the Li18nux 2000 Specification to better support Internationalization and localization. The descriptions of interfaces defined by the LSB have been clarified and improved overall. The data definitions are more complete now. Some duplications were eliminated and some omissions have been included. Below are details of some of the changes:

New Interfaces

touchline touchwin __isinf __isinff __isinfl __isnan __isnanf __isnanl asprintf freeaddrinfo gai_strerror getaddrinfo getgrgid_r getgrnam_r getnameinfo inet_ntop inet_pton isinff ngettext statvfs64 tdelete pam_acct_mgmt pam_authenticate pam_chauthtok pam_close_session pam_end pam_fail_delay pam_get_item pam_getenvlist pam_open_session pam_set_item pam_setcred pam_start pam_strerror _Unwind_DeleteException _Unwind_Find_FDE _Unwind_ForcedUnwind _Unwind_GetDataRelBase _Unwind_GetGR _Unwind_GetIP _Unwind_GetLanguageSpecificData _Unwind_GetRegionStart _Unwind_GetTextRelBase _Unwind_RaiseException _Unwind_Resume _Unwind_SetGR _Unwind_SetIP, and socket ioctl() commands

Deprecated Interfaces

__dcgettext alphasort alphasort64 endhostent fstatfs fstatfs64 gets sethostent setmntent statfs statfs64 waitid

New Libraries

libgcc_s (Unwind interfaces) libpam

New Specifications

RPM File Format

New ELF Section

.jcr

A reader writes: The Free Standards Group has posted a request for feedback, now that they have completed LSB 1.2 and li18nux is also finished. Where should they/we go next? "

Staili writes: "Zdnet is reporting that The Free Standards Group released version 1.1 of the Linux Standard Base (LSB) as well as the first version of the Linux Internationalization Initiative standard to deal with Linux language barriers."

gk4 writes "The LSB has updated and published the gLSB v1.1 draft for review. The LSB has also published for review the new psLSB for IA32 v1.1 draft and the completed LSB v1.0.1 Test Suites. Review ends Friday January 4th; however, the LSB welcomes comments from the community at any time."

gk4 writes "The LSB has updated and published the gLSB v1.1 draft for review. The LSB has also published for review the new psLSB for IA32 v1.1 draft and the completed LSB v1.0.1 Test Suites. Review ends Friday January 4th; however, the LSB welcomes comments from the community at any time."

gk4 writes "The LSB has updated and published the gLSB v1.1 draft for review. The LSB has also published for review the new psLSB for IA32 v1.1 draft and the completed LSB v1.0.1 Test Suites. Review ends Friday January 4th; however, the LSB welcomes comments from the community at any time."

Peter Makholm writes: "Finally the 1.0 version of the Linux Standard Base released. Now software vendors can finally just say that they comply with the standard and then you should be able to use the software on any Linux whether you uses Debian, TurboLinux or Open Linux. Check the standard at linuxbase.org."

Scott McNeil e-mailed me regarding Linux Standard Base releasing .9 - check out the full release of information below.

The Linux Standard Base is in the final stages of the LSB written specification for Linux. The workgroup has published the LSB v0.9 written specification, and is undergoing a 30 day Request For Comments from the public until Wednesday June 6th, 2001. Afterwards, this draft will be submitted to the Free Standards Group for adoption.

http://www.linuxbase.org/spec/lsbreview.html

The LSB is built on pieces of existing standards that are widely used by the industry and supported by the development community. These include:

• ELF & TIS 1.2
• FHS 2.1
• ISO C90 & C99
• LFS 1.5
• POSIX.1
• POSIX.2
• SUS (CURSES, XBD, XCU, XNS, XSH, XSH95)
• X base interface standards

Work is primarily being done by the development community and the major Linux distributions including Caldera/SCO, Debian, Mandrake, Red Hat, SuSE, and Trubolinux. Further contributions have come from IBM, Intel, Linuxcare, Metro Link, VA and others.

The goal of the LSB is to develop and promote a set of standards that will increase compatibility among Linux distributions and enable software applications to run on any compliant Linux system. In addition, the LSB will help coordinate efforts to recruit software vendors to port and write products for Linux.

http://www.linuxbase.org/

The LSB is but one of several open source standards efforts run by the Free Standards Group, a nonprofit organization founded by community developers to accelerate the use and acceptance of open source technologies through the application, development and promotion of standards.

http://www.freestandards.org/

CarrotLord asks: "Looking at the recent release of IBM's Small Business Suite for Linux got me wondering about distribution compatibility and standards. Personally, I run Debian, and am considering a move to Progeny. However, I am concerned by the fact that many products (particularly commercial ones) are available for only a particular subset of distributions (usually RedHat, Mandrake, SuSE, TurboLinux and Caldera, but rarely Debian-based distributions or the BSDs). What is the current state of play, particularly in regards to tools for developers to enable them to create and test installation packages for various distributions?" Such a tool would go a long way in removing the force behind the "Linux fragmentation" argument that most of Linux's detractors often refer to.

"How are the LSB and the FSSTND affecting consistency between distros? What about RPM and APT? What tools are there available for developers of software to ensure that their software runs on the widest variety of systems? Is there some software development or packaging tool to assist developers in making distribution-independant software, so they can create files in dpkg, RPM and tgz formats for any distribution without much additional effort on their part? What about tools to test their software installation on individual distributions, and assist with the resolution of problems? Should this be up to the individual distributions, or should be have a unified approach?"

Daniel Quinlan writes "Today, the Free Standards Group released version 1.2 of the Linux Development Platform Specification and let loose with the public review of FHS 2.2-beta that will be used in the Linux Standard Base (and is already being used by distributions). Also of note, the Linux Standard Base has a new chairman, George Kraft IV, and the LSB specification is nearing completion. Really."

Daniel Quinlan writes "Today, the Free Standards Group released version 1.2 of the Linux Development Platform Specification and let loose with the public review of FHS 2.2-beta that will be used in the Linux Standard Base (and is already being used by distributions). Also of note, the Linux Standard Base has a new chairman, George Kraft IV, and the LSB specification is nearing completion. Really."

Daniel Quinlan writes: "The Free Standards Group is publishing a beta release of the Linux Development Platform Specification (LDPS) which tells third-party software providers how to best achieve binary-compatibility across different Linux distributions (well, at least until the Linux Standard Base is done). It's important to note that third-party software providers include not just the large vendors like Oracle and IBM, but also anyone who creates a binary package for use on more than one version of a single distribution."

Leo Comitale writes "According to this press release the Linux Standard Base and the Linux Internationalization (I18N) project have merged and are calling themselves the Free Standards Group. I think it is really important for Linux to have a basic, low level standard for file system layout and support for international languages. These areas are critical to keeping Linux from splintering into a bunch of incompatible variants, and it seems these efforts are not getting as much support as they probably should be."

It's definately been a hot topic lately, no doubt about it. But Daniel Quinlan wrote in to send us a press release from the LSB stating that the Debian/Red Hat standards project (LCS) will be working with the LSB. Daniel has also been named as Bruce Perens replacement as the head of LSB. Besides having an @transmeta.com email address, Daniel has been the head of the Filesystem Hierarchy Standard. I'm really glad to see this come together. Anyway, I've attached the announcement- click below if you want to read it.

Additional Vendors Participate in Growing LSB Effort

LCS founders join the LSB project

We are happy to announce that the founders of the Linux Compatibility Standards (LCS) Project, a collaboration of Debian and Red Hat, will work on Linux standards as part of the LSB effort. Now that the LSB Project combines the original focus of the LSB with the goals of the LCS, the LCS founders see no need for any separate standardization effort.

LSB elects new chair and forms 3 technical sub-projects

After Bruce Perens departed on August 10th, it was necessary to find a new chair for the LSB organization. It was felt by several vendors that such a chair should be impartial and thus not from any Linux vendor. The new chair of the LSB Steering Committee is Daniel Quinlan (head of the Filesystem Hierarchy Standard).

Originally, the focus of the LSB project was to produce a Linux reference platform that would define a standard Linux. Any program that ran successfully on the reference platform could be expected to run on all compliant Linux systems. An LSB written standard and test suite were secondary goals.

As discussion of how to develop the reference platform continued, it became obvious that without active work on a written standard and a test suite, that the LSB project wouldn't be successful in achieving its goals. Therefore, the LSB project has now reorganized into three technical sub-committee projects of equal importance, each with a prominent technical lead.

• LSB written standard Technical lead: Stuart Anderson (Metro Link, Inc.)
• LSB test suite Technical lead: Dale Scheetz (Debian)
• LSB sample implementation Technical lead: Ralf Flaxa (Caldera)

These three groups will work together to develop a base standard for the Linux operating system as follows:

• The test suite must match the written standard.
• A conformant distribution (such as the sample implementation) must pass the test suite and follow the written standard.
• Conformant applications should run on the any distribution that passes the test suite.

And when the above is not true, then something needs to be fixed. If it can't be figured out by the technical groups, then the steering committee will arbitrate.

Finally, the sample implementation will be composed entirely of free software and the test suite will be as free as the LSB can make it without rendering the test suite meaningless.

New LSB web site

There is now a web site for the LSB project: http://www.linuxbase.org/

About the Linux Standard Base

The Linux Standard Base (LSB) is developing a set of standards that will increase compatibility among Linux distributions and enable software applications to run on any compliant Linux system. The LSB will also help coordinate efforts to recruit software vendors to port and write products for Linux.

We have also created several open mailing lists (for more information, please see the LSB web site). The public "at large" are encouraged to subscribe to these lists, with a request that non-committee members "lurk" quietly.

The list of individuals and organizations participating in the LSB effort or endorsing the LSB includes:

• Alan Cox, Building Number Three
• Caldera, Inc.
• Enhanced Software Technologies, Inc.
• Eric S. Raymond, open-source evangelist, and author of "The Cathedral and the Bazaar"
• Evan Leibovitch, Chair of 86open Project
• Jon A. Hall, Executive Director, Linux International
• Linux Hardware Solutions, Inc.
• Metro Link, Inc.
• Pacific HiTech (TurboLinux)
• Phil Hughes, Director Linux International, Publisher of Linux Journal
• Red Hat Software, Inc.
• S.u.S.E. GmbH
• Software in the Public Interest
• The Debian Project
• VA Research

(For the growing list of participants, please check www.linuxbase.org.)

Contact Information

For further information, please send email to press@linuxbase.org or visit the Linux Standard Base home page at Linuxbase.org.