The LSB Delivers Again

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."

Comments

The hell is the LSB?

[Magus311X]

For the lazy... (from the document):

The Linux Standard Base (LSB) defines a system interface for compiled applications and a minimal environment for support of installation scripts. Its purpose is to enable a uniform industry standard environment for high-volume applications conforming to the LSB.

The LSB defines a binary interface for application programs that are compiled and packaged for LSB-conforming implementations on many different hardware architectures. Since a binary specification must include information specific to the computer processor architecture for which it is intended, it is not possible for a single document to specify the interface for all possible LSB-conforming implementations. Therefore, the LSB is a family of specifications, rather than a single one.

The LSB is composed of two basic parts: A common part of the specification describes those parts of the interface that remain constant across all hardware implementations of the LSB, and an architecture-specific part of the specification describes the parts of the specification that are specific to a particular processor architecture. Together, the generic LSB and the architecture-specific supplement for a single hardware architecture provide a complete interface specification for compiled application programs on systems that share a common hardware architecture.

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Re:LSB

[Compact Dick]

LSB = Linux Standard Base. As to what it is...

From their site:

The Linux Standard Base (LSB) defines a system interface for compiled applications and a minimal environment for support of installation scripts. Its purpose is to enable a uniform industry standard environment for high-volume applications conforming to the LSB.

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Geddit? :)

Timely...NOT!

[V. Mole]

Was there any point in publishing this on the afternoon of the day of the end of the comment period?

[mod parent up, please] Re:"L" is the problem

[footility]

Agreed. There is a similar project for the BSD
world at http://www.openpackages.org/. It would
be _great_ if the two would cooperate to define
a common *nix platform that vendors could depend
on.

b

Re:[mod parent up, please] Re:"L" is the problem

[Tachys]

Problem is http://www.openpackages.org/ was last updated in July

LSB is not a standard

[jgarzik]

It should be noted that LSB is not really a standard, and not really intended as a standard. It is intended as a common practices document, as the LSB mission statement points out.

My personal objections to the LSB are large, and centered around one single fact: The LSB documents as "standard" the GNU C library and command line utilities. This means that every Linux /bin/cat must support odd and non-Unix GNU options like --number-nonblank and --squeeze-blank and --show-nonprinting. /bin/cat must support cat -E, which could easily be replaced by a sed script (GNU cat implementor was apparently unaware of sed's existence). This means that, according to the LSB, libc[56] is non-standard because it does not support glibc-specific functions and interface.

So, the net effect is that any system claiming to be Linux-standard [according to the LSB] must support all these wacky, underused, GNU-specific extensions in their commands and C library. Given the proliferation of C libraries under Linux this seems like a mistake of a large order.

Jeff

Re:LSB is not a standard

[jgarzik]

If you think distros are going to proudly avoid LSB compliance(ah, I wish...), you are smoking something. Distros are already making major efforts to be compliant with the LSB. All the major distros have some LSB compliance effort going AFAIK.

deb format

[CatherineCornelius]

I agree that rpm is a good package format, but my own experience on Debian is that it's by far the nicest distribution for upgrading and installing new packages. dselect was actually very good, but apt is divine.

But this isn't the reason why I use Debian. That reason is the deb format. It's quite simply far more powerful and more consistent.

Here's a discussion of the issues by a Debian package maintainer

But deb format maintenance requires a certain package developer/maintainer culture that might tend to clash with the requirements of the kernel/base developer/maintainers, which are rather different from those of general package maintainers. And Debian-based systems can already deal with rpms, no problem, using alien. So using rpm for standardized base is a no-brainer.

Re:How are the Distro's doing?

[ParisTG]

I was browsing rpmfind.net a few days ago, and I found a bunch of packages in Mandrake Cooker which were modified for LSB compatibility. That's probably a good sign.

Re:Good, but don't forget FHS.

[Hal_9000@!!!@]

" That is why I think the FHS is slightly more important. The Filesystem Hierarchy Standard is supposed to help prevent this, so hopefully the LSB compliments this cool document supported by freestandards.org."

The FHS is part of the LSB.
From the first sentence of Chapter 17: "An LSB conforming system must adhere to the FHS 2.2."

Re:How are the Distro's doing?

[infiniti99]

SuSE is LSB compliant.

Re:How are the Distro's doing?

[BlowCat]

It's a bug, that's why it's in bugzilla. And please note, the bug is not closed! I don't think that anybody would break ABI compatibility intentionally.

You contention that "major Linux distros can't keep binary compatibility between updates and errata" is not corroborated by any evidence. It is only RedHat and they seem to be working on the correct fix now.

Re:Good, but don't forget FHS.

[Hard_Code]

So what do we need FHS for if we can just do "which filename"?

Hahaha! I'm sure you were being sarcastic. But if not, here's a clue:

$which filename
which: Command not found.