Linux Standard Base

[Matt Zimmerman]

On Mon, Jan 03, 2005 at 06:08:57PM +0100, Erik Bågfors wrote:

> What's the plan för LSB support in ubuntu.  Warty has the following packages,
> 
> ii  lsb            1.3-9ubuntu7   Linux Standard Base 1.3 core support package
> ii  lsb-base       1.3-9ubuntu7   Linux Standard Base 1.3 initscript functions
> ii  lsb-release    1.4-7.1ubuntu3 LSB release command
> 
> yet lsb_release gives "N/A".

We are following the development of LSB, and have taken specific actions in
order to comply with some versions of the specification, but as yet no
specific effort has been made to test and certify Ubuntu with a particular
version of LSB.

This would be something to discuss for the release after Hoary.

> I'm in the situation where we have binaries that needs to run on a
> number of distributions and we have taken the oldest distribution we
> have as a "compile" box just because it's always worked on all
> distributions.  Compiling on a newer dist sometimes gives us code that
> doesn't work on an older. Mostly due to libc.
> 
> I was hoping that LSB would solve this for us, therefore, what's the
> status of LSB plans for ubuntu?

LSB standardizes what you can expect to be available on the system, but I
don't currently know of any tools which will compile programs for you in
such a way that they only use LSB interfaces.  A book has been published on
the subject, though:

http://www.linuxbase.org/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=46

-- 
 - mdz