Slashdot Mirror
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."
This is great and dandy and all, but which distro's are going to pay attention to this? Anyone have a link as to the state of LSB-compliance for the major distros?
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.
-----
LSB is an excellent initiative. But the bad thing is the "L" ("Linux") in it.
This standard is designed for Linux, and only Linux.
Standardization of the filesystem namespace is needed on *ALL* Unices. And an unique document that would apply to *ALL* Unices would be a big win, both for developpers and for end-users.
DJB's packaging system isn't that bad. The only trouble is that only DJB promotes it and very few software are packaged that way because it totally changes the traditionnal namespace layout.
{{.sig}}
There is a poison that is affecting this great land, and that poison has a name: Linux.
You may have heard of this dangerous hacker's program. Developed by the Soviets during the Cold War, Linux is a "UNIX-like operating system." In layman's terms, this means it is computer software that allows criminals to perform unauthorized (and illegal) tasks with their computers. What may shock you, however, is that this program has begun to slowly make its way through our nation's computer networks, and now threatens the economy, the stock market, and the great corporations that founded our country and keep it running.
Linux, and other hacking tools with such strange names as "emacs," "PHP" (an obvious drug reference) and "gcc," have been used by thousands of foreigners and terrorists to undermine the American way of life. Okay, I realize you might be skeptical. How, you ask, could the United States, the world's peace-keeping police force, allow such harmful programs to enter our great country? Folks, I wish this was just an alarmist rant. But the threat to capitalism is real. Although the former Iron Curtain is long gone, its final creation is coming to bear on our own soil, in our own backyards.
Yes, friends, leftist groups and individuals, although mostly confined to covert computer hideouts called "chat rooms," are actively spreading Linux into corporations and other organizations as you read this. Why would any American do such a thing? We may never know. Perhaps these misguided individuals have been shunned by legitimate software development firms like Microsoft and America Online. These poor souls, many of whom are but children, have sadly devoted themselves to a life of crime, by secretly learning programming techniques such as "debugging" and "optimizing," techniques previously reserved for patriotic, God-fearing professional engineers like Bill Gates.
The time to act is now! As proud citizens and voters, we owe it to our children to stand up to this new "red scourge" and voice our concerns to our elected representatives. It is a sad testament to our country's deteriorating moral fiber that, despite the efforts of righteous Christian organizations such as the RIAA and the MPAA, the use and possession of Linux is still legal. Frightening, yes, but through faith and determination, we shall drive these Linux terrorists from our holy American soil.
So RPM is now the "standard?" I'm not sure I like that. RPM is great and all, and many distros use it or at least can handle them, but I think maybe it should be refined a little more. I like debian's package manager as it is easy to use and fairly straightforward. I know RPM is supposed to be that way as well, but I've had a lot more dependency problems with RPMs than I have with apt.
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
What f*ing box!?!?
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
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.
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.
Standards/guidelines are good for the Linux community, how many times have you followed a installation readme, or read a HOW-TO and *nothing* is where it supposedly should be?
Try typing which filename with common executable names on two different distros and you will know what I am talking about.
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.
This sig is taken.
I'd like to just get a few objections in on the LSB while everyone runs around cackling with perverted glee.
/log come to mind) but at least that lets us get an idea of where the mess all came from, and when we delete the directory we can also delete all dangling symlinks and truly get rid of stuff.
/usr/bin and the lib directories.
I for one am sick of finding files from install packages all over the place. Everyone and their mother is sick of this. Apps should install into ONE directory only. They can symlink everything they want everywhere else (/etc and
Linux is literally worse then windows on this count. PLEASE PLEASE contain the spawl. Someone needs to do an ls -l on
What LSB really needs is some alternatives to choose from. The thing I most dislike about standards, especially those that try to codify existing sloppy practices, is lack of choice and the end to new ideas.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
Personally I'd rather have things equally bad than have each distro be bad in its own unique way...
creation science book