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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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