[lsb-discuss] LSB conf call notes for 2008-07-30

Jeff Licquia jeff at licquia.org
Thu Aug 7 12:30:43 PDT 2008


Dalibor Topic wrote:
> Jeff Licquia wrote:
>>   - How will distro vendors acquire and run the Java test suite?
>>   
> Through the OpenJDK Community TCK license agreement, assuming they use 
> OpenJDK.
> 
> Please see http://openjdk.java.net/legal/openjdk-tck-license.pdf for the 
> license,
> http://www.sun.com/software/opensource/java/faq.jsp#k for the FAQ,
> and http://openjdk.java.net/groups/gb/2007-08-23.html for additional Q&A.
> 
> If they use another implementation, then the vendor/provider would deal 
> with the
> certification for them - for example when using a Java implementation from
> another fine source of Java runtime technology on the PowerPC architecture,
> a distribution would rely on the runtime vendor for certification.

Right now, when someone wants to test their distribution for LSB 
compliance, they can download a single tarball or RPM, install it to 
their system, and begin testing with a minimum of fuss.  My question was 
whether this could be preserved in some fashion, without having to 
double or triple the amount of work necessary to get tested.

My guess is that if it took a significant amount of extra work to get 
the Java portions of the tests, we would have to decouple those tests 
from the rest of the framework.  If history repeats itself, this would 
mean that the tests would never be run in practice until the last 
possible moment, and might even result in distros electing not to 
certify.  This would be unacceptable from our point of view.

>>   - How will application vendors writing Java code certify to LSB?  
>> Can we just bless the 100% Pure Java program, or is there more to it?
>>   
> I don't think we need Java application vendors to certify to the LSB 
> specifically, as long as Java is just a runtime technology they use - 
> but if LSB starts including Java bindings to Linux-specific technologies 
> (like Qt Jambi, or Java Gnome) in future versions, that would be 
> something the LSB could look into.

OK.  But then we'd want some kind of statement to that effect in the 
specification, so we should make sure that gets done.

>>   - Are there any Linux-specific parts of Java that we need to 
>> document?   (JNI comes to mind.)
> There are no Linux-specific parts of Java according to my knowledge. JNI 
> is part of the Java platform.

Right, but since JNI is a C interface, its manifestation on a Linux 
platform will be different than, say, Windows.  That's the part I was 
thinking might need to be documented: things like the library's name, 
the interfaces it exports, etc.

And even if those are part of the spec, we have tests for C APIs that 
will need to know how to test for them.



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