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Porting to the Linux Standard Base
An anonymous reader writes "If an application conforms to the Linux Standard Base (LSB), and a flavor of Linux is LSB compliant, the application is guaranteed to run. This tutorial, written by Martin Streicher, Editor in Chief of Linux Magazine, ensures that your code runs reliably on as many Linux flavors as possible. It shows you how to port your apps to the Linux Standard Base, then takes you through the LSB test tools to verify conformance."
"If they were serious about a somewhat standard linux, they would have started with debian."
1-LSB is more than just RPM.
2-There's nothing wrong with RPM. Just the people who use it.
No, if they were serious they would have made it distro and packaging tool agnostic. Picking to base it on debs and the way Debian does things would be no different then picking rpm and how Red Hat does things.
"I use a Mac because I'm just better than you are."
RedHat were somewhat a latecomer to the LSB group. The aim of LSB is admirable but probably fatally flawed as the first poster shows it all in his mention that Debian should have been used as its basis. /etc and a few other key directories.
The aim (I might be wrong here) was to be totally distro independant but make all the key bits be in the same place especially in
I'd rather be riding my '63 Triumph T120.
and was just an attempt by redhat to push the subpar RPM package format. If they were serious about a somewhat standard linux, they would have started with debian.
.deb broken because of this? I hope not!
There is nothing wrong with the RPM format (I do prefer Debian, though - it's a more unix-y way of doing things). It's just that for a long time there was no centralized repository of RPM packages, so everything was a mishmash, and led you to dependency hell. Debian though, has a central repository and enforced the provision that all packages must have dependencies on things inside the repository to be accepted. It's not a format issue, it's a policy issue. E.g., I can't take my Debian installation, point it at Ubuntu's servers, then just do "apt-get update; apt-get dist-upgrade" and expect my system to migrate to Ubuntu. Most likely I'd be left with a half-functional mess. Is
RedHat never enforced the policy nor maintained a central repository of packages. Debian has. And for a while, Debian had superior package management tools.
In fact, I really preferred the old Familiar Linux IPK format - you only need gzip and tar (it was all tarballs) to hack through those packages rather than debian's usage of ar and tarballs.
(And these days, with apt-rpm and yum, dependency issues have reduced significantly).
Debian policy requires all packages to follow the filesystem hierarchy standard (FHS). If not, it's considered a bug. Any downstream derivatives of Debian should, as a result, also implement the FHS.
"I may not have morals, but I have standards."
Hoho, LSB is to make Linux more attractive to business. do you know how many enterprises/goverments I've seen using Debian in the last 8 years, zero.
Talking about packaging mechanism I preffer the way closed source companies do things (like for example Google Picasa or Earth). This is, to link everything statically. Why not? That will warranty your application performance not mattering the libx.y.z.so the user has on its system.
How much space can a statically linked program take? 10MB? 20MB? 30MB? everyone has 10GB of unused space nowadays...
At least there should be that option, I will use it in order to avoid the hassle of having to download dependencies and all that shit.
And even on deb based distributions, I have just installed Ubuntu in a PC that does not have internet access. Because of that it is a hell if I want to update or install new software as I have to download and search for dependencies... synaptic help a bit but only if I want to install new software that was in the list as I can not fetch a new list.
If every program was compiled and linked with all the necessary functions statically, it would be a matter of downloading and extracting the binary file (maybe changing the permission to 555). I liked that about Picasa (I installed it without problems in the Ubuntu).
Oh, and another good thing of doing that is that it may not be necessary to have ROOT access to run a program. Just now I am writing this from my university PC with Fedora, I do not have root access hence I can not install and run any new software. If I want to run something new I need to download the tarball and compile it, provided that the required libraries (with the required version) are isntalled, otherwise I am screwed. That is a flaw!
Please someone provide a repository of statically linked open source software. Isnt that possible?, linked for the major distributions...
Ubuntu is an African word meaning 'I can't configure Debian'
No, if they were serious they would have made it distro and packaging tool agnostic.
.rpm suffix for it, but apart from that I don't see the problem. It's trivial to install LSB packages on Debian.
They chose to base it on a file archive with a header. It was a bit unlucky that they picked the
The real problems with LSB lie elsewhere. I have never used an LSB compliant application and I run Linux >95% of the time.
Finally! A year of moderation! Ready for 2019?
XP is basicly 98 with a lot more extra features to hunt down and disable. --Dram
If they did that, what would an LSB-compliant system have to look like? It would completely defeat the purpose of having the standard in the first place.
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
Just now I am writing this from my university PC with Fedora, I do not have root access hence I can not install and run any new software. If I want to run something new I need to download the tarball and compile it, provided that the required libraries (with the required version) are isntalled, otherwise I am screwed. That is a flaw!
Not a flaw, basic sysadmin'ing... don't want to users fucking things up.
With the --prefix and --root switches for rpm, you can install software&libraries in your home directory.
Chapter 2. Using RPM to Install Packages
Please someone provide a repository of statically linked open source software.
The downside with statically link executables is if there is a flaw(e.g. buffer overflow) with a library, you need to recompile&reinstall all the executables that have that library statically linked. Dynamically linked means just need to re-compile the offending library and restart the executable.
If you ever start to care for & feed a machine or three, you'll start to see there is a method to the madness.
If the govt becomes a lawbreaker, it breeds contempt for law, it invites man to become his own law, it invites anarchy
The downside with statically link executables is if there is a flaw(e.g. buffer overflow) with a library, you need to recompile&reinstall all the executables that have that library statically linked. Dynamically linked means just need to re-compile the offending library and restart the executable.
For which you will update your application to the newest version containing already the patch uh? nothing too different to what happens now (for example firefox 1.0.0 ~ 1.5 updates). This would be achieved either by making a diff in the last version and current version and distributing an update binary or by distributing the whole new program.
thanks for the RPM flags tho.
Ubuntu is an African word meaning 'I can't configure Debian'
Actually you probably can dist-upgrade Debian to Ubuntu. This is not a task for a novice and is definetly not supported, but it should work.
/etc/apt/sources.list;apt-get update;apt-get dist-upgrade" though.
Its slighty more involved than "vim
X(7): A program for managing terminal windows. See also screen(1).
For which you will update your application to the newest version containing already the patch uh?
Yes, you're right. Go forth and spread your vision far&wide, so that the unwashed masses might be enlightened.
If the govt becomes a lawbreaker, it breeds contempt for law, it invites man to become his own law, it invites anarchy
Rubbish.
Autotools are the wrong solution, LSB is the right one. Autofoo is an awful build system (the nick "autohell" has its reasons, just see the results in google). They are horrible to use, the scripts are a nightmare to debug, and M4 is just plain from hell. SCons, CMake, Premake, Jam are better tools (btw, CMake has been created by autotools veterans and creators). The interest in better build systems is quite high, just look at the KDE guys (they moved everything from autofoo to CMake), or at Blender. Autotools may have been a good idea back then, but its time for some progress.
Also, NO ONE ever uses autotools in Windows, there is just no reason to do that.
CS is bad bad bad? Oh my. CS is THE ONLY WAY Linux is ever going to have serious games (is Doom3 OS? UT2004? NWN?) and if Adobe decides to port Photoshop, be prepared for a binary blob. Maya is closed source. Baad programs we don't need? Dream on. Besides, the aforementioned games have their issues with incompatible libc's etc. which is the precise reason why LSB is a GOOD thing.
This sig does not contain any SCO code.
that's great news, and I don't say that Debian or derived works are unsuitable for business, just that I've not seen it as choice in U.S. for business. Now if someday most of the world's population standardizes on a distro by virtual of India and China and South America's and surrounding countries going in a different direction, maybe then the U.S. would have to change just to do business.
There are three distributions listed that conform to LSB3.0: SUSE, RedHat, and Asianux. Why should I write for LSB?
FTFT (from the...tutorial): LSB has binary compatibility standards, so I can compile once and run anywhere. But if the application is GPL and nontrivial, it shouldn't be that hard to get it into the package repositories in question. Otherwise, it's probably in a scripting language, so the end user doesn't have to build or install it anyway.
This is really only important for commercial Linux software.
Binary installation should only be handled by priviliged users.
./configure && make && make install, right?
Because source-based installation is pefectly safe, as we all read every line of code in the tarballs we
Smartass.
"Anyone have a "public" version of this doc?" ... that doesn't cost $40?
How much space can a statically linked program take? 10MB? 20MB? 30MB? everyone has 10GB of unused space nowadays...
You do realise it also saves RAM as well, if the library is in use in multiple applications? Not everyone has 10GB free RAM. Or even 10MB free RAM.
Besides: my current Linux system is running of a 3.3GB partition on my total 10GB hard disc. Not everyone runs current hardware, and many Linux users consider the fact that it is better at supporting old hardware than current versions of Windows one of its most important benefits.
The point of dynamic libs is not just the memory savings, both RAM and disk, but the bug fixing. You fix a bug in a lib, all the linked apps get it fixed by definition. Static apps require the vendor to relink and rerelease the apps.
There is also a small slowdown with dynamic apps, load and runtime, but that has never bothered me.
Infuriate left and right
A statically-linked program doesn't just use up more space on disk. It also uses more space in RAM. And caches.
Quake 3 is open source. Check out Tremulous or the newest Rocket Arena for games using the engine.
Debian (and Ubuntu) have several lsb-packages that provides LSB-support (although the description of the package clearly states that the presence of the package should not be interpreted as a sign of full compliance (in similar (but different) wording)). Debian is also on the "team" behind the evolving LSB-standard (see freedesktop.org or search the web).
:)
I think LSB is great. For instance, people can write OpenGL-software and target lsb-graphics; instant portability.
And, most important of all, if you're ever to sell shrink-wrapped boxes with linux-software, you can attach an "LSB-compliant" sticker to it.
You say that now, but just wait until you try to statically link each and every KDE or GNOME app with 50 MB worth of libraries. I could easily see that taking up (50 MB * 500 programs =) 25 GIGABYTES worth of disk space.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
...but don't feel bad, so do most people on this forum
_ Standard
It' looks like it only applies to package formats. Am I wrong?
Yes, you are almost completely wrong. LSB applies to much more than package file formatting. LSB distributions have a common set of libraries and such, so that every single LSB package has the exact same set of dependencies--those defined by the spec. There is even a package NAMING convention that must be followed to ensure there are no package naming conflicts.
I would really love to see this implemented by everyone!!! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filesystem_Hierarchy
Then you'd really love to see LEB implemeted by everyone too, becasue the FHS is one aspect of the LSB.
Not if the package versions need to go downward instead of upward
X(7): A program for managing terminal windows. See also screen(1).