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."

Re:LSB is worthless

[grimwell]

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 [rpm.org]

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.

Why use LSB?

[dhasenan]

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.

Re:LSB is worthless

[int19h]

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. :)