Application compliance vs conformance
John R. Daily
jdaily at progeny.com
Mon Jan 21 11:40:40 PST 2002
Comparing the definitions of compliant and conformant
applications in the spec is challenging, because the definitions
have differing levels of detail. I've included them at the bottom
of this email for reference; note that the first is one sentence
that essentially states "See this document", and the second
consists of 6 very specific bullet points.
Is there any technical distinction, or is the difference
contained entirely in the following sentence from the conformance
proposal posted here earlier this month?
...
LSB Conformance is not be be confused with LSB Compliance or LSB Certificaiton.
LSB Compliance is a self test, but requires registration of the results with
the LSB.
...
-John
...
LSB-Compliant Application
An application written to include only the system routines,
commands, and other resources included in this document, and
that has been compiled into an executable file that has the
formats and characteristics specified for such files in this
document, and whose behavior complies, installs, and is
executed in the environment with the rules given in this
document.
LSB Application Conformance
An application with the following characteristics:
1. Its executable files are either shell scripts or object
files in the format defined for the Object File Format
system interface.
2. Its object files participate in dynamic linking as
defined in the Program Loading and Linking System
interface.
3. It employs only the instructions, traps, and other
low-level facilities defined in the Low-Level System
interface as being for use by applications.
4. If it requires any optional interface defined in this
document in order to be installed or to execute
successfully, the requirement for that optional
interface is stated in the application's documentation.
5. It does not use any interface or data format that is
not required to be provided by a conforming
implementation, unless:
* If such an interface or data format is supplied
by another application through direct invocation
of that application during execution, that
application is in turn an LSB-compliant
application.
* The use of that interface or data format, as well
as its source, is identified in the documentation
of the application.
6. It must not use any values for a named interface that
are reserved for vendor extensions.
A strictly conforming application does not require or use any
interface, facility, or implementation-defined extension that is
not defined in this document in order to be installed or to
execute successfully.
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