[lsb-discuss] LSB 3.1 Certification

Ian Murdock imurdock at imurdock.com
Wed Jun 14 14:38:50 PDT 2006


Hi Irina,

On 6/14/06, Irina Boverman <iboverma at redhat.com> wrote:
> During f2f meeting it was suggested to have 2 or 3 certification types:
> core/c++ and desktop. Is this still being considered? If yes, will this
> be available for 3.1 or only future certifications?

The main discussion at the f2f centered around making it possible for LSB
compliant distros to install only the minimum set of LSB modules needed
by an application. So, if an LSB compliant application didn't
use the desktop component, the LSB shouldn't require it to be installed.

This isn't currently how it works in LSB 3.1. LSB 3.1 says a compliant
application must depend on a single package, "lsb", which when installed
ends up pulling in the entire LSB. The reason is as follows: As we were
going down the two certification path for 3.1 (i.e., having separate core
and desktop certifications), the feedback we got was that having more than
one certification was confusing. I've been a pretty strong proponent
of having a 1-to-1 relationship between certifications and user-visible
modules (i.e., the things a user can install, depend on, etc. with the
package manager), and that's why we ended up making everything required.

There was pretty strong consensus at the f2f that we got it wrong, and
that it should be possible for distros to install, say, only LSB
Core if that's all the application needs, and to use the
dependency mechanisms in the package systems to make things work.

Mea culpa.

So, we need to allow for this. Whether we can do this retroactively
for LSB 3.1 or whether this is a 3.2 thing can be an open question.

The real question is whether the 1-to-1 relationship between certifications
and user-visible modules is important. I'm less convinced about this than I
used to be. While there's clearly demand from the distros to provide and
applications to require less than the full LSB, I'm not sure articulating
that from a branding perspecitive (i.e., having multiple
certifications) is confusing or useful. I'm leaning toward confusing now.

Thoughts? This is actually a great opportunity to follow up on the f2f
and get into that "ongoing conversation" I talked so much about then.

> Where can I find transcripts of weekly meetings?

I'll typically post minutes within a day or so of the meeting, though I'm
traveling this week and am a bit behind on the writeup. We'll also be
recording the calls (hopefully starting in a few weeks) so you'll be able
to listen in directly.

-ian
-- 
Ian Murdock
317-863-2590
http://ianmurdock.com/

"Don't look back--something might be gaining on you." --Satchel Paige




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