An operating system's success is inextricably linked with the number and quality of applications that run on top of it. Linux and its variances between distributions, however, present ISVs and individual developers with a unique set of challenges: different distributions of Linux make use of different versions of libraries, important files stored in different locations, and so on. If an ISV wants to reach a global Linux audience, they must support more than one distribution of Linux. These challenges and variances make it difficult--and costly--for ISVs to target the Linux platform.
The Linux Standard Base was created to solve these challenges and lower the overall costs of supporting the Linux platform. By reducing the differences between individual Linux distributions, the LSB greatly reduces the costs involved with porting applications to different distributions, as well as lowers the cost and effort involved in after-market support of those applications.
Learning, Testing and Certifying to the LSB
The Linux Developer Network (LDN) is the online community for Linux application developers and independent software vendors who want to start or continue their journey developing applications for the Linux platform. The core component of that journey is the tools and information found within the Linux Standard Base (LSB).
There are four essential steps to making applications as portable as possible.
- Learn About Portability, and what the LSB really means for the application developer.
- Check Your App to learn just where your application stands as a portable app. Does it need a lot of work, or just a little tweaking? Here you will find the tools and guidelines to discover the portability of your application.
- Make Your App Portable and start taking the steps to maximize its portability. Find out how in this section.
- Moving Forward with the LSB will demonstrate the next step: what to do after your application is as portable as you wish. This may mean certifying to LSB. There are many path available to get your application to the widest user base, and this section will show you how!
Participating in the LSB workgroup
Anyone who wants to help in the LSB process is always welcome. Interested participants are invited to subscribe to the LSB-Discuss mailing list, attend IRC chat sessions, and join the LSB Workgroup's pages here on LinuxFoundation.org. Our old wiki pages are also available.
The source code for all our software, our data, and our specification is also available, and we welcome outside contributors. We manage our source code using the Bazaar version control system at bzr.linuxfoundation.org. Classic patches or Bazaar merge directives can be sent to the LSB-Discuss mailing list.
Best Effort Linker issues
Current Best Effort Linker uses a set of fixed paths for the dynamic loader.
Should we concider expanding this to include envormental vars like LSB_LD_SO for path to lsb ld so file and LSB_PLATFORM_LD_SO for the distributions ld.so.
I know making lsb relocatable does not seam a requirement. With items like android using the / may not be a option. So the FHS offset to another directory maybe required. Should Best Effort be made support this.
