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StringCheesian
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Joined: 21 Oct 2003
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 Posted: Mon Sep 19, 2005 11:37 pm Post subject: Gentoo and the new Linux Standard Base 3.0 |
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| An eweek article wrote: | | The LSB 3.0 is a set of standards designed to ensure compatibility among Linux distributions and the applications that run on them. It is expressly designed to prevent the kind of application incompatibilities that have bedeviled the different distributions of the Unix operating system. |
| LSB 3.0 release notes wrote: | Summary of Major Differences
In general, LSB 3.0 does not represent a major technological change from LSB 2.0. However, in accordance with the roadmap published in August 2004 when LSB 2.0 was released, LSB 3.0 requires a newer release of the underlying ABI used for C++ support. For most vendors, this means that gcc 3.4 or later (actually, the minimum acceptable level is 3.4.4), or compatible equivalent must be used, and any C++ application built with gcc 3.3 or earlier must be recompiled. In addition, a few deprecated interfaces have been removed, some new commonly used interfaces have been added, a library has been added to the core set, some X11 extensions were added, and some additional commands have been introduced. Most of these changes are to increase compatibility with the POSIX specification, and to address other comments submitted during the IsoBallot. |
It seems Gentoo x86 stable isn't LSB 3.0 compliant. |
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tsunam
Retired Dev
Joined: 23 Feb 2004
Posts: 343
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| Posted: Tue Sep 20, 2005 12:25 am Post subject: |
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*shrugs* gentoo doesn't claim to be LSB compliant. The general concensus is that if we are great, if not well its no big deal.
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allucid
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| Posted: Tue Sep 20, 2005 12:42 am Post subject: |
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| The LSB is the biggest steaming pile of crap anyways. |
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Alighieri
Tux's lil' helper
Joined: 27 Jan 2005
Posts: 88
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| Posted: Tue Sep 20, 2005 3:41 am Post subject: |
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| Yes, LSB is crap. However, you can download a complete sample implementation from http://www.linuxbase.org/download/ and unpack it into /opt. A quick chroot will give you an LSB 3.0 environment in which you can run all those 3rd party binary apps, of which there are none and never will be any. A quick ebuild or two for those packages would give gentoo an LSB environment. |
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curtis119
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| Posted: Tue Sep 20, 2005 3:24 pm Post subject: |
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Everyone is correct, Gentoo does not claim to be LSB compliant. However, I have seen many many discussions on irc and in the various mailing lists where the devs try to be LSB compliant and, for the most part, do a good job of it. For instance, locations of Portage files was changed about ummm a year ago(?) to make it LSB compliant.
The thing you have to remember is that Gentoo itself is not a distro per se. It's more a set a of tools for you to use to build your own distro. That's why Gentoo is billed as a metadistro. If you want it to be, your GentooOS can be LSB compliant. GCC-3.4.4 is in portage and has been very widely used for a looooong time. GCC-4.0 has also been available for use for a long time.
I have an example of how Gentoo really does stick very closely to the LSB. I wanted to try Firefox-1.5beta but didn't feel like actually installing it to my root filesystem because I knew I would remove it after a day or so. I downloaded the binary from mozilla.org and ran it from my /home dir. It started perfectly and threw not a single error. That's because Gentoo puts all the libs in the correct LSB compliant places so Firefox was able to find and use them with no problems.
And saying the LSB is crap is just wrong. The LSB may not be perfect but it is a good implementation of a standard way for Linux distros to remain compatible with each other. IMHO it's better than nothing and it is doing what it set out to do; allowing a binary to be built once on any machine on any LSB compliant GNU/Linux distro and run on any other compliant distro out of the box. As I said, it may not be perfect but like all things FOSS it is a work in progress and the current standard is pretty damn good.
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Alighieri
Tux's lil' helper
Joined: 27 Jan 2005
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| Posted: Tue Sep 20, 2005 3:41 pm Post subject: |
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Some people close to LSB think its crap -> http://www.livejournal.com/users/udrepper/8511.html
Anyway, that's a good point about the file system hierarchy. LSB may have more value in providing guidelines for how to organize system layout rather than true binary compatibility. |
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curtis119
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| Posted: Tue Sep 20, 2005 6:44 pm Post subject: |
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| Alighieri wrote: | Some people close to LSB think its crap -> http://www.livejournal.com/users/udrepper/8511.html
Anyway, that's a good point about the file system hierarchy. LSB may have more value in providing guidelines for how to organize system layout rather than true binary compatibility. |
Yeah, like I said it isn't perfect by any means. I liked that articles reference to API vs ABI which is a much easier and realistic thing to set a standard for. Hopefully if enough people point out the problems/submit fixes they will get fixed (isn't that the normal way things get accomplished in FOSS?).
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/dev/random
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Joined: 26 Nov 2004
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| Posted: Wed Sep 21, 2005 12:55 am Post subject: |
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Are you sure you don't mean the FHS (File System Hierarchy Standard)? |
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curtis119
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| Posted: Wed Sep 21, 2005 3:53 am Post subject: |
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| /dev/random wrote: |
Are you sure you don't mean the FHS (File System Hierarchy Standard)? |
The FHS is part of the LSB and both are part of freestandards.org. So yes, I was referring to that part of it when discussing locations of libs. But there is much much more to it than just where to put a lib. The location is the only thing covered by the FHS subproject. Other requirements are covered by parent project, LSB.
1. Apps require specific versions of libs.
2. The lib has to actually be named correctly (Nothing stops a distro from installing libs with any old name they want).
3. Once the app finds the lib it also needs to be able to read that lib so the lib itself must be built in a specific way (ELF) with a certain version of GCC or higher.
4. There's the naming convention of files in /etc (for packages that are going to be installed to the root file sytem). This means projects have to register the names of their conf files with the Linux Assigned Names and Numbers Authority so they don't clobber the conf files of other applications.
5. If your package is a daemon it's script in /etc/init/ must follow the convention of start, stop, restart, status, more recently they added try-restart, reload, force-reload but not all(any?) gentoo init sripts follow them yet *or ever for all I know*.
And other things but those examples are just off the top of my head.
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Jake
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| Posted: Wed Sep 21, 2005 5:57 am Post subject: |
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| Gentoo should follow the LSB the same way GNU/Linux follows POSIX. Don't severely break things, but don't comply for the sake of compliance if users prefer the non-compliant implementation. |
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Enlight
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Joined: 28 Oct 2004
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| Posted: Wed Sep 21, 2005 12:29 pm Post subject: |
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| Jake wrote: | | Gentoo should follow the LSB the same way GNU/Linux follows POSIX. Don't severely break things, but don't comply for the sake of compliance if users prefer the non-compliant implementation. |
So I guess we should all leave ou -march settings...
IMHO ABI compliance is stupid, some of the best CFLAGS (-mreparm={1,2,3} and -freg-struct-return for example) can't be used by distributions 'cause they break ABI, even if they are known to produce better code, since they need to be used since the first static compilation of gcc (on gentoo the problem comes from ebuild that strips CFLAGS). |
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/dev/random
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Joined: 26 Nov 2004
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Location: Austin, Texas, USA
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| Posted: Wed Sep 21, 2005 1:59 pm Post subject: |
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| curtis119 wrote: | | /dev/random wrote: |
Are you sure you don't mean the FHS (File System Hierarchy Standard)? |
The FHS is part of the LSB and both are part of freestandards.org. So yes, I was referring to that part of it when discussing locations of libs. But there is much much more to it than just where to put a lib. The location is the only thing covered by the FHS subproject. Other requirements are covered by parent project, LSB.
1. Apps require specific versions of libs.
2. The lib has to actually be named correctly (Nothing stops a distro from installing libs with any old name they want).
3. Once the app finds the lib it also needs to be able to read that lib so the lib itself must be built in a specific way (ELF) with a certain version of GCC or higher.
4. There's the naming convention of files in /etc (for packages that are going to be installed to the root file sytem). This means projects have to register the names of their conf files with the Linux Assigned Names and Numbers Authority so they don't clobber the conf files of other applications.
5. If your package is a daemon it's script in /etc/init/ must follow the convention of start, stop, restart, status, more recently they added try-restart, reload, force-reload but not all(any?) gentoo init sripts follow them yet *or ever for all I know*.
And other things but those examples are just off the top of my head. |
Well I had a feeling the FHS would be part of the LSB it just seems like you can comply with the FHS and not the LSB if you please, and I've seen the FHS mentioned in changelogs for portage and such before, but never the LSB. I think we need a dev to clear this up. I looked through the past threads about the LSB (search Gentoo Chat for LSB there are quite a few), and I didn't see any devs saying strict adherence to the LSB was such a great idea. However, the most recent thread about it other than this one that devs have commented in is almost exactly one year old. |
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jkriger
Tux's lil' helper
Joined: 03 Oct 2003
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Location: Buenos Aires, Argentina
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| Posted: Wed Sep 21, 2005 4:04 pm Post subject: |
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Hi!
I think that Gentoo should follow somehow the LSB standar.
If we want to spread Gentoo to world, and receive donations of all kind to support those guy that create the ebuilds, fix bugs, moderate the forums, etc., etc., etc. Gentoo should adopt LSB. I'm not saying adopt as the bible, of course not! Just do some modification to be able to say that Gento is LSB compliant. Just that.
I think that Gentoo is great, and adding LSB wont do any harm to harm, and maybe make it even greater.
Regards,
Julio |
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curtis119
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| Posted: Wed Sep 21, 2005 5:01 pm Post subject: |
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| /dev/random wrote: |
Well I had a feeling the FHS would be part of the LSB it just seems like you can comply with the FHS and not the LSB if you please, and I've seen the FHS mentioned in changelogs for portage and such before, but never the LSB. I think we need a dev to clear this up. I looked through the past threads about the LSB (search Gentoo Chat for LSB there are quite a few), and I didn't see any devs saying strict adherence to the LSB was such a great idea. However, the most recent thread about it other than this one that devs have commented in is almost exactly one year old. |
I agree, strict adherance to the LSB is not really something Gentoo devs want to do (in general, from what I have seen on irc and in the mailing lists). And even if the devs DID want to strictly adhere to it many of the users will break it, as is their right. But the devs do try to stay as close to the standard as possible, especially if it's somethng that doesn't mean more work for them or is easy to implement. Some of the LSB specs are beyond the devs control though. Just like someone above said, things like CFLAGS and such are totally in the users control.
If you really want to get the devs opinions on this just sign up to the gentoo-dev mailing list and ask them. I can't wait to see what ciarnm has to say about it. 
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yngwin
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| Posted: Wed Sep 21, 2005 5:38 pm Post subject: |
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Couldn't care less about LSB. Gentoo works fine for me. I have no need to use or have interoperability with other distros...
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dresb
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| Posted: Wed Sep 21, 2005 5:40 pm Post subject: |
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I think linux really needs to provide a simple way for software developers, to distribute a binary file that will run in any linux box.
Centralized package management is a great thing, specially for servers. I still think its the best way to install and update system resources and critical applications in desktops, it would be a lot better if the user could always have the choice of a ready-to-use binary file for normal applications, just in case there isn't a package aviable for its distribution of choice, and he did't have the technical knowledge to create a new package from the sources.
Linux its never going to be mainstream until this is posible, of course, this isn't the only requirement for linux to become mainstream, but I think it would help, a lot. |
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Q-collective
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| Posted: Wed Sep 21, 2005 7:10 pm Post subject: |
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| yngwin wrote: | | Couldn't care less about LSB. Gentoo works fine for me. I have no need to use or have interoperability with other distros... |
Nice narrowminded view. But you're right, the LSB is more of interest for developers then it is for endusers. |
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/dev/random
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| Posted: Wed Sep 21, 2005 8:33 pm Post subject: |
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| curtis119 wrote: |
If you really want to get the devs opinions on this just sign up to the gentoo-dev mailing list and ask them. I can't wait to see what ciarnm has to say about it. |
Yeah I was trying to find a quote from him.  |
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slycordinator
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| Posted: Thu Sep 22, 2005 2:44 am Post subject: |
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| jkriger wrote: | | Just do some modification to be able to say that Gento is LSB compliant. |
So you want them to say "Gentoo is 75% LSB compliant"?
If [insert-linux-distro-here] doesn't comply with everything in the LSB then it cannot claim to be LSB compliant. |
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curtis119
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| Posted: Thu Sep 22, 2005 3:39 am Post subject: |
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| slycordinator wrote: | | jkriger wrote: | | Just do some modification to be able to say that Gento is LSB compliant. |
So you want them to say "Gentoo is 75% LSB compliant"?
If [insert-linux-distro-here] doesn't comply with everything in the LSB then it cannot claim to be LSB compliant. |
hmmm this is technically true. However, the specs for LSB are not all created equal. Gentoo actually can be only xx% compliant and still achieve the goal of interoperability between distros. Some of the LSB specifications are not really necessary for this but are more "extras" that don't bring anything to Gentoo so why try to meet them if there's not a good reason too?
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slycordinator
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| Posted: Thu Sep 22, 2005 4:29 am Post subject: |
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| curtis119 wrote: |
hmmm this is technically true. However, the specs for LSB are not all created equal. Gentoo actually can be only xx% compliant and still achieve the goal of interoperability between distros. Some of the LSB specifications are not really necessary for this but are more "extras" that don't bring anything to Gentoo so why try to meet them if there's not a good reason too? |
I wasn't saying that we should try to be 100% compliant. Look back at what I was quoting. He said "Just do some modification to be able to say that Gento is LSB compliant."
I was telling him that you can't claim to be "LSB-compliant" and at the same time not comply with the LSB.
See, if we claim to be LSB-compliant then we can get people who would normally not go for gentoo since they'll feel more "secure" knowing it complies with "standards." But if they find that we don't actually comply with the LSB then they'll either feel worried that we're not the "good choice" we seemed or pissed that we lied by claiming to be compliant.
Now if we claimed to be interoperable with LSB... that's a different story. |
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allucid
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| Posted: Thu Sep 22, 2005 5:22 am Post subject: |
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| No distro should bother trying to comply with the LSB until it is fixed. All major issues need to be worked out first. It's a waste of time and effort to try and comply with (parts of) a broken standard. |
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slycordinator
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| Posted: Thu Sep 22, 2005 5:51 am Post subject: |
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| allucid wrote: | | It's a waste of time and effort to try and comply with (parts of) a broken standard. |
Why not comply with the non-broken parts? I imagine the parts that aren't broken right now won't be changed when they fix the others.
If some distro wanted to be fully-compliant I think it'd be a good idea for them to start on the parts that work right now. That way, when the standard is fixed later, you don't have as much work to do. |
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Aperion
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| Posted: Fri Sep 23, 2005 4:19 pm Post subject: |
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why not an lsb USE flag combined with an lsb ebuild that contained the LSB standards? Might just be a way to tell portage that owner wants to comply with LSB, Gentoo is about choice right?
Ok, I don't know any specs on LSB but from what I've read here on the forum it has to do with file structure (which it sounds like Gentoo does a somewhat decent job), and what flags and architecture a binary is compiled for, and this is what I base it on. Based on just these a USE flag might limit the gcc version as well as it's C[XX]FLAGS to comply with what ever version LSB the user is trying to comply with, which can be controlled by package.keywords.
I don't know if something like that would be able to make Gentoo LSB compliant (is the use wants to be) but perhaps it would be able to make it a little bit easier. |
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Q-collective
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| Posted: Fri Sep 23, 2005 6:15 pm Post subject: |
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Hmm, an LSB USE flag might not be a terrible bad idea actually.
Any dev view on this? |
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