[lsb-discuss] LSB 3.2 Compliance Report: Sun JRE 6 (update 5) on x86

[Wichmann, Mats D]

> However, if these were the only two issues stopping lsb conformance,
> we could probably get these addressed.  However, amongst a list of
> 80'ish failures, we won't get much traction.  Let's just put these on
> the shelf as "we think we have an answer".  When everything is on
> that shelf, then we should look at the contents and decide if it is
worth it.
> 
> However, this investigation led me to some associated thoughts:
> 
>     1)   We support one binary for a number of rather old distros.  I
>           think we still support RHAS2.1.  Suppose the lsb interfaces
>           don't exist on those platforms.... Suppose (rather
> stylized): 
> 
>           sym = dlsym("posix_spawnp", ...);
>           if (sym != NULL) {
>              posix_spawnp(...);
>           } else {
>              syscall(__NR_fork, ...)
>              syscall(__NR_execve, ...)
>           }
> 
>           You get the idea.
> 
>           We could test this by interposing on the offending calls
> (syscall) and
>           issue a test failure should that call be encountered.
> (Obviously, needs
>           targetted tests to exercise the right code.)
> 
>           Has this been considered?

Sure, a runtime check is always valid, although one would have
to be a little tricky.  For example, unless you've turned on
lazy binding, the presence of posix_spawnp will kill a system
that doesn't yet have it; meanwhile the LSB checker will still
get unhappy with the presence of syscall. I'm almost thinking
you'd have to abstract this out a layer into a kind of plugin
that's dlopen'd depending on which scenario you're in "old-compat",
or "LSB".

> 
>     2)   I don't see any definition of /proc in the LSB.  This means
> that although
>           we have avoided not tripping over the entry points, we are
> still not
>           conformant to a rather interesting interface.  Has this
>           issue been discussed?

Yes.  Many times.  Answers?  Not really; this is a minefield.