[lsb-discuss] LSB certification for development environment and/or compiler

[Banginwar, Rajesh]

Hello,
	At this time LSB offers two kinds of certification programs: one
for runtime providers (Linux distros) and another for applications. For
applications to become LSB compliant the recommended method is to use
LSB SDK which is released and maintained by LSB WG. LSB SDK provides all
the necessary tools, LSB specific headers and stub libraries to create
LSB compliant binaries and packages (package part is still beta).

With that intro here is the question/thought: LSB needs to offer a
certification program for compilers and/or development environments
(IDEs). These LSB certified IDEs/compilers will be capable of producing
LSB compliant binaries. This is different than just making the IDE
binary itself LSB compliant. (To avoid the confusion) we are talking
about a completely new LSB certification program here which will make
third party IDEs certified to produce LSB binaries.

I will like to invite you all to discuss this and how one can implement
such a certification program. How does the conformance test suite for
the IDEs/compilers look like? How can a compiler/IDE vendor guarantee
that they are capable of producing LSB binaries?

One can always use lsbappchk to validate the generated binary (the tool
can be tightly integrated with the IDE itself if needed), but that is
post compilation step. We can also enforce IDEs to use LSB headers and
stubs, but is that enough?

I will also like to invite REALbasic and other IDE providers to join the
discussion. 

Thanks,

-Rajesh