Sample Implementation, Application Battery and LSB Build Status

Week of November 17, 2003

Highlights

  1. Appbat building works on glibc 2.3.2 platforms, but requires the use of the libbat, which now has three libraries: openssl, freetype and glut (from freeglut). Libbat is built from appbat ("make libbat"), if a copy not already installed, do this first, make the rpm in the subdirectory, and install before proceeding with the rest of the appbat build.
  2. Appbat now has a configuration script which tests for some key features before the build is kicked off. If the script complains about something which is known not to be a problem, just do "touch config.status" and report a bug against appbat.
  3. Investigating additional complex apps, mainly C++, to further stress building. Investigation list: Mozilla Firebird, the Gimp, bochs, alpha player, flightgear, openvrml, vncserver. Also redo the build of mysql to pick up the shared c++ lib.

LSB Build Tools

  1. lsbdev 1.9 snapshots are now being built. These have turned on C++ as an LSB shared library. Also affects appchk, libchk..

    Warning: as of the 1029 snapshots, a glibc 2.3.2 build host is required.

  2. Eight packages built by the LSB project have been renamed and now install into /opt/lsb. The new package names are lsb-build-base, lsb-build-cc, lsb-build-c++, lsb-build-chroot, lsb-appchk, lsb-libchk, lsb-cmdchk, lsb-pkgchk. Excepting lsb-build-c++ these are all autobuilt nightly and so available from the snapshots directory immediately. Hand-built ia32/ia64 lsb-build-c++ packages exist now, others due soon.
  3. TODO: C++ headers need to go into lsb-build-base package, and lsb-build-c++ needs to go away completely. We still don't know what to do here; one thought is to just pick a set from a gcc version and copy them in. Generating these out of the DB looks daunting.
  4. Are we going to be able to accommodate anything other than gcc 3.3? 3.4 changes the ABI (including the soversion) and so it out; 3.2 looks like it's missing too much. Is that too restrictive to be useful? A patch to the linker script for 3.2 exists, and with it 3.2 libs are pretty good, but that would require a re-release of those libraries by older distros, unlikely to happen. Even 3.3 is missing some symbols from the ABI set, so it looks like the target is going to have to be yet-to-be-release distributions.
  5. Looking for a way to support multiple concurrent lsb-build versions. Needed for internal transition phase to 1.9/2.0; also needed for bi-arch systems which may need to have two build environments. E.g., it's no good if both a 32-bit and 64-bit set of stub libs would install to exactly the same path.
  6. Request: each package should be buildable for /usr/local (default), or other prefix if supplied. LSB build would use something like prefix=/opt/lsb. This mainly works for the four autobuilt test packages through INSTALL_ROOT; it does not work for all of the lsb-build packages which may have some paths built into them today (e.g. lsbcc has hard-coded paths, not a path set as a build-time target).
  7. Curses issues: we supply curses.h and libncurses.so. Not having two names for both fools some software, should add libcurses.so as a symlink and ncurses.h as a symlink in lsb-build-base.
  8. libchk build currently depends on an installed set of stubs for linking the dummy program libchk uses to derive the paths to the real runtime libraries. Consider a scheme where this build can be more self-contained (perhaps build a local copy of stubs and link with them).
  9. Decide what to do with lsbdev chroot bugs (Chris to look at these when he gets a chance). The chroot is untested since the package renaming/movig.
  10. Investigation of lsbdev tools with a non-GCC compiler. Mats had some luck with this on ia32/ia64, but not without changes. Each compiler is likely to have slightly different build rules for the link step; lsbcc must know about these because by the time the compiler has inserted libs and other rules lsbcc is already out of the picture. E.g., for Intel's compiler, a "compatibility flag" -cxxlib-gcc is needed which lsbcc needs to know about or it will read it as -c; the compiler also requires some extra static libraries which lsbcc needs to know about too. To avoid exposing this to an existing build setup, it was necessary to hack lsbcc; long-term the compilers should support LSB-compatible building themselves. Mats was able to build appbat + extras + libbat, except for Celestia, with icc (8.0 beta) and a modified lsbcc (this was done when only openssl was in the libbat). One way to mitigate the hack-lsbcc problem, if the compiler doesn't support lsb building itself, would be to abstract the linker rules into a config file so different config files could be produced for other compilers.
  11. lsb-rpm is not a maintained tool, it was a special build for the chroot to avoid importing extra libs. We would like to have an lsb package build tool, however - one that knew about lsb conformance rules and worked the same everywhere. Best would be if a maintained toool could have an lsb mode, instead of needing to maintain a separate tool or our own patchset. Can we make this happen for rpm (the most likely candidate)?
  12. pkgchk needs to move towards a release. One round of test/fix was done recently. This is now considered a 2.0 deliverable.
  13. Need resolution of lsb dependencies for multiple architectures (e.g. lsb-ppc32 and lsb-ppc64 on a ppc64 machine). Also for the lsb-release package, which provides the same function for non-rpm packages (affects release of lsbsi-lsb pkg) - need to define the syntax for this. In addition, a request was made to define, at the same time, how this will be extended for profiles (without necessarily defining the profile names yet - just define the naming scheme). See http://www.linuxbase.org/~mats/multi_arch.html for more discussion.

LSB Application Battery

  1. We can now build the current appbat with current tools. Patches were committed for ushort/uint problems in Apache and Samba. A static libglut is added to the libbat from the freeglut project. Even with this change, Celestia continues to be a problem; it has a fair bit of"old" (pre-ISO-standard) C++ which continues to cause problems (warnings in gcc but fatal in other compilers). A static libfreetype was also added to libbat because some platforms are supplying libfreetype has a DT_NEEDED on libz, but of course the static archive can't describe such a dependency, and without the xpdf build knowing it needs to add -lz, there are undefineds. Other recent issues are now resolved via the build tools (e.g. addition of an empty <sys/sendfile.h> and the addition of __ctype_b_loc and friends to the stub libc and headers).
  2. Appbat now has a configuration script which tests for some key features before the build is kicked off. If the script complains about something which is known not to be a problem, just do "touch config.status" and report a bug against appbat.
  3. A table of packages with new upstream versions is included below. The focus is on C++ apps at the moment; Celestia and groff have been uplifted this week to the new versions indicated. Other uplifts are at the discretions of the team: try out the new versions as time permits, and make a decision. Sometimes a new version introduces major new issues through the addition of large chunks of new functionality or a rewrite of a large section, may wish to avoid these (document why, in this case) if that's not an issue that drives the LSB forward. xpdf version 2.x requires Motif for the viewer, fooling with that proved non-trivial and does not currently advance the state of the LSB so will be left alone.
  4. Renaming issue: not clear that "move LSB-delivered packages to /opt/lsb" applies sensibly to appbat. Where /should/ these packages install? Putting Apache in /opt/lsb-apache might imply it's an officially supported build of Apache for LSB. Maybe /opt/lsb-appbat as a namespace for all of the appbat programs?
  5. A proposal remains on the table to build a libbat: static versions of key libraries that are LSB candidates, but not yet in the specification. This might smooth over some current build issues, and also might enable building some more complex applications, such as gnumeric, mysql, etc. The current model of lsbdev-c++ has indicated this can be useful. At the very least, when a library is "ported", the instructions should be captured so others don't have to reproduce the work. E.g., openssl was worked on as part of an experiment with openssh; libxml2 was worked on as part of an LSB conforming nALFS. The initial target for a 1.3-level libbat is "simplify building of the appbat". As of now, the list of static libs that may be problematic include tiff, jpeg, png, Xaw, Xmu, freetype, t1lib, glut. Update: the libbat model is operational, but contains only two libraries: freeglut (to help build Celestia, some distros don't ship libglut.a and some are now removing glut entirely for license reasons), and openssl. It's possible to type ''make libbat'' in the appbat tree (very lightly tested to date, and only for ia32/ia64).
  6. See library dependency graphs at http://www.linuxbase.org/~matsw. The dependency tool is in the LSB-futures web tree http://www.linuxbase.org/futures/identification/depends/lsbdepgraph.py.
  7. An uplift to latest nALFS was considered, but will not be done now. A reason for considering this is that the xml in use is not valid according to external validators and thus restricts the tools available to work with it (e.g. the check/download tool can't use an xml parser to read the package information). However, the use of nALFS at all remains problematic when appbat is considered a build example to others, as they're unlikely to adopt yet-another-tool. Perhaps should return to rpm-based building, if we could reliably capture all the information to eliminate the reproducibility problems on ia32 that were a problem before..
  8. Make the FVT capture-and-submit process more automated where feasible. Currently, you run all the FVTs manually and then assert in your certification application that you did so, and they passed. No results are submitted, and there's no automation. Minimal automation concept is to, where possible, have setup instructions, followed by one or more steps (possibly with further setup in between) that kick off a test and return a pass-fail result, so there's less visual evaluation to determine whether it worked or not. For some apps it's not feasible without a sophisticated test driver tool (xpaint, Celestia, etc.) - basically doesn't work if graphics are involved.
  9. The appbat rpms will now include a target LSB version as well as package version, encoded as "package-upstreamversion-lsbbuildnumber-lsb20.arch.rpm". Some distros are using similar naming schemes for packages now.
  10. Old, needs resolving: some problems detected with xpaint on one platform. Question: does this happen with a native xpaint installed, or not - not sure if the app-defaults for xpaint are going to the right place (i.e., may pick up from native xpaint if one is installed, and not find one if the LSB version puts it in the wrong place and there's no native version).
  11. Need an appbat package to use install_initd/remove_initd to install/remove startup scripts as an example.
  12. Build Dependency tool - currently nALFS doesn't have a good way to represent build dependencies, may need to build a tool to help with this, esp. when appbat is used outside LSB project as an example.. A solution might be to capture these ourselves in libbat - might solve short-term need.
  13. Add new representative sample applications, particularly C++.. Candidates: openjade? ImageMagick (has a C++ binding Magick++)? mysql? openssh? ghostscript? lyx? Note: mysql built, openjade already added to appbat (but not in certification bundle). Added to investigation list during the 11Nov call: Mozilla Firebird, the Gimp, bochs, alpha player, flightgear, openvrml, vncserver. Most are C++; some are to test if the build infrastructure has improved enough (e.g. Mozilla was too hard to build in the past, is it better now? the Gimp is not C++ but does use the bottom layer - only - of Gnome: glib,gtk,gdk,gmodule).
  14. Check all existing packages for FHS conformance. Possible areas of concern: if an X app-defaults file is installed, does the app find it? Are there /var/run scripts that are being put in /var/opt/pkgname/run instead? etc.
  15. A suggestion was raised to have the appbat packages indexed by rpmfind. This is under discussion. One thought was that maybe the upstream maintainers ought to give permission. A second question was whether we should continue the build-with-nALFS, package-with-rpm policy, or whether we should try to return to building with rpm.

LSB Sample Implementation

  1. Sample Implementation design is being finalized for the dual-architecture platforms. At the moment it looks like AMD64 will be a pure 64-bit platform similar to Itanium but with ia32 libs; powerpc64 will be a 32-bit platform (should be able to be a copy of powerpc32) with 64-bit libraries. What does S390 look like?
  2. Discussion on future directions for lsbsi. A table of packages with new upstream versions is included below.
  3. (Old). The lsbsi is still missing install_initd and remove_initd (it provides empty dummies). These are really failures to conform to the spec, but as there's no test they aren't flagged as such by the testing procedure. Still looking for volunteers to work on both a sample implementation and a test suite - there was a thought that Novell might be interested, to be explored further. An idea raised in the past might be worth considering: the sample could perhaps work on a non-standard location so that "cheaters" who try to install a startup script directly instead of using the required tool to install them could get detected by installing in the lsbsi.
  4. The 'lsb' packages for all architectures need to be released for lsb 2.0. Note this package is now known as lsbsi-lsb, to emphasize it's only intended for the lsbsi. This package supplies lsb_release, install_initd, remove_initd, and the proper dependencies (which remain to be determined for 2.0).

Appbat Packages with upgraded base

Package Appbat
Version
Upstream
Version
celestia 1.2.5 1.3.0 Upgrade complete
groff 1.17.2 1.18.1 Upgrade complete (availability of 1.18.1 is a question)
httpd 2.0.43 2.0.48 2.0.43 patch does not apply cleanly. 
Python 2.2.2 2.3.2 Some new porting issues.
rsync 2.5.5 2.5.6
samba 2.2.7 2.2.8a/3.0.0  
tcl/tk 8.3.4 8.4.4  
expect 5.38.0 5.39.0  
xpaint 2.6.2 2.7.0  
xpdf 1.01 2.03 xpdf 2.x requires Motif or lesstif. Neither works; both expose missing interfaces in libX11/libXt.
OpenSP 1.5 1.5.1 For openjade. No changes needed, uplift complete.

LSB-si Packages with upgraded base

Package LSBSI
Version
Upstream
Version
Comments
at 3.1.7 3.1.8-11 From Debian (new maintainer?)
binutils 2.13.2 2.14 2.15 is close
bison 1.35 1.875  
coreutils  Note 5.0 was: fileutils 4.1, textutils 2.1, sh-utils 2.0
diffutils 2.8.1 2.8.4 2.8.4 is an unofficial (?) release 
e2fsprogs 1.32 1.34  
file 3.39 4.03  
gawk 3.1.1 3.1.3  
gcc/g++ 3.2.2 3.3.2  
gettext 0.11.5 0.12.1  
glibc 2.2.5 2.3.2 Will be required by LSB 2.0
kbd 1.06 1.08  
lfs-bootscripts 1.10 1.11  
man 1.5k 1.5m2  
man-pages 1.53 1.60  
mktemp 1.4 1.5  
modutils 2.4.22 2.4.26  See http://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/utils/kernel/modutils/v2.4/README on post-2.4.23 issues
pax 3.0 3.1  
psmisc 21 21.3  
rpm 3.0.6 4.1 version was previously "kept low" intentionally
sed 4.0.5 4.0.7  
shadow 20001016 4.0.3 previous uplift attempt failed one test
sysvinit 2.84 2.85  
texinfo 4.3 4.6  
util-linux 2.11y 2.11z 2.12 is near release
X11 libraries 4.2.0 4.3.0 New layout makes this problematic (have to grab everything)

LSB-si Standards Compliance

This section documents the known variances of the lsbsi from LSB version 1.3.

The lsbsi does not provide (or rather provides empty) required tools install_initd and remove_initd. These are not currently tested for, so do not show as failures.

The state of PAM in the lsbsi is still somewhat of an unknown, awaiting tests.

The following are the 44 known internationalization failures in the LSB-si running the 1.3.3 test suites. They show non compliance in the upstream packages diffutils (1), grep (3) and textutils (40). With the exception of the grep package failures, these are now waived via INT.010 (PR 0037) for LSB 1.3, no determination of the status of requiring these for 2.0 has yet been made. The grep issue is fixed in grep 2.5.1, but the release status of this version is uncertain at this time so remains unfixed. Some earlier failures which are also waived through INT are not listed here.

/tset/LI18NUX2K.L1/utils/diff/diff 2 FAIL
/tset/LI18NUX2K.L1/utils/egrep-tp/egrep-tp 5 FAIL
/tset/LI18NUX2K.L1/utils/fgrep/fgrep 5 FAIL
/tset/LI18NUX2K.L1/utils/fold/fold 1 FAIL
/tset/LI18NUX2K.L1/utils/fold/fold 2 FAIL
/tset/LI18NUX2K.L1/utils/fold/fold 3 FAIL
/tset/LI18NUX2K.L1/utils/grep-tp/grep-tp 5 FAIL
/tset/LI18NUX2K.L1/utils/join/join 3 FAIL
/tset/LI18NUX2K.L1/utils/join/join 4 FAIL
/tset/LI18NUX2K.L1/utils/pr/pr 1 FAIL
/tset/LI18NUX2K.L1/utils/pr/pr 3 FAIL
/tset/LI18NUX2K.L1/utils/pr/pr 4 FAIL
/tset/LI18NUX2K.L1/utils/pr/pr 5 FAIL
/tset/LI18NUX2K.L1/utils/pr/pr 6 FAIL
/tset/LI18NUX2K.L1/utils/sort/sort 8 FAIL
/tset/LI18NUX2K.L1/utils/sort/sort 9 FAIL
/tset/LI18NUX2K.L1/utils/sort/sort 10 FAIL
/tset/LI18NUX2K.L1/utils/sort/sort 11 FAIL
/tset/LI18NUX2K.L1/utils/sort/sort 12 FAIL
/tset/LI18NUX2K.L1/utils/sort/sort 13 FAIL
/tset/LI18NUX2K.L1/utils/sort/sort 14 FAIL
/tset/LI18NUX2K.L1/utils/sort/sort 15 FAIL
/tset/LI18NUX2K.L1/utils/sort/sort 16 FAIL
/tset/LI18NUX2K.L1/utils/sort/sort 24 FAIL
/tset/LI18NUX2K.L1/utils/sort/sort 25 FAIL
/tset/LI18NUX2K.L1/utils/sort/sort 26 FAIL
/tset/LI18NUX2K.L1/utils/sort/sort 27 FAIL
/tset/LI18NUX2K.L1/utils/sort/sort 28 FAIL
/tset/LI18NUX2K.L1/utils/sort/sort 29 FAIL
/tset/LI18NUX2K.L1/utils/sort/sort 30 FAIL
/tset/LI18NUX2K.L1/utils/sort/sort 31 FAIL
/tset/LI18NUX2K.L1/utils/sort/sort 32 FAIL
/tset/LI18NUX2K.L1/utils/sort/sort 40 FAIL
/tset/LI18NUX2K.L1/utils/sort/sort 41 FAIL
/tset/LI18NUX2K.L1/utils/sort/sort 42 FAIL
/tset/LI18NUX2K.L1/utils/sort/sort 43 FAIL
/tset/LI18NUX2K.L1/utils/sort/sort 44 FAIL
/tset/LI18NUX2K.L1/utils/sort/sort 45 FAIL
/tset/LI18NUX2K.L1/utils/sort/sort 46 FAIL
/tset/LI18NUX2K.L1/utils/sort/sort 47 FAIL
/tset/LI18NUX2K.L1/utils/sort/sort 48 FAIL
/tset/LI18NUX2K.L1/utils/unexpand/unexpand 1 FAIL
/tset/LI18NUX2K.L1/utils/uniq/uniq 2 FAIL
/tset/LI18NUX2K.L1/utils/uniq/uniq 3 FAIL

With runtime test 1.3.6 approved for certification, there was an additional failure introduced from the gettext package. This failure is waived by INT.007 (PR 0031).

/tset/LI18NUX2K.L1/utils/msgfmt/msgfmt 9 FAIL