Re: [gentoo-dev] Linux Standard Base

[Dan Armak <ermak@netvision.net.il>]

You're absoutely right. The LSB guys aren't going to provide us with 
'software map' files or RPMs themselves. The only people likely to do that 
are the maintainers of a distro or, the developers of the program who would 
then lean (naturally) to their own preferred distro.

But why is it that whenever I want to download some package from its 
home site I see only one source tarball but more RPMs than I can count? Is 
this the 'standard' they propose? Imagine a caricature: the LSB stands 
between Redhat, SuSE and Mandrake, planting its flag with the motto: the 
center of the earth is Here. Gentoo and some other stragglers are seen on the 
horizon.

Instead of _making_ a standard, they _selected_ one. Instead of reconciling 
the differences between the distributions, they've selected a feature which 
several have and the others deprecate and said: this is Right. It is a Good 
Thing. I call this monopoly practice, and discouraging competion. I could 
almost believe Redhat bribed the LSB. Ugh.

If pursued, this policy (not only with regard to RPMs, but other similar 
propositions as well) won't 'standardize' and 'unite' anyone - it can only 
create a rift between the RPM-based distros and those that aren't.

Remember the LSB half a year or so ago? Their main accomplishment was the FHS 
(in itself a very good thing). How did they characterize themselves back 
then? (Maybe they still do.) They would provide standard specifications for 
various parts of Linux, as they did with the FHS, so that the distributions 
become interoperable! I always thought this meant I could compile - well, 
anything - even a program designed for some other Unix perhaps - and it would 
work out of the box! But is seems that the LSB, after debating for what - a 
year, more? - finally decided that the best way to ensure that would be to 
make other people compile for me, and give me binary RPMs! If it took a year 
to decide, it must have been 'stuck in committee'...

The distributions are supposed to be different - that's why they exist. 
Grassroots anti-LSB movement anyone?.. :-)

Dan Armak

On Monday 09 July 2001 22:24, you wrote:
> Dan Armak <ermak@netvision.net.il> writes:
> > But there's already one such method that always works - configure;
> > make; make install. If LSB says RPMs are better than that, it
> > discourages practicing what is the heart of Portage - automatized
> > downloading, compiling & installing. The LSB should push for
> > standardized results, not for a standard way of achieving them.
>
>   extremely well put.
>
> > Whoever wants a pre-compiled package will eventually be able to get
> > it via Portage which already supports binary packages. Whoever gets
> > a package from its home site as source is thus encouraged to write
> > an ebuild for it and give back to the community. RPM availability
> > would desatroy that - Portage and emerge would simply become much
> > less important.
>
>   well, and there is more icky stuff:
>
> ,----[ <url: http://www.linuxbase.org/spec/gLSB/gLSB/x12251.html > ]
>
> | Package Dependencies
> |
> | Packages must depend on a dependency "lsb". They may not depend on
> | other system-provided dependencies. If a package includes "Provides"
> | it must only provide a virtual package name which is registered to
> | that application.
>
> `----
>
>   at first, one might think, "great, no more looking for the oddball
>   package that contains <foo>"... but in reality, you're saying.
>   "bundle everything inside lsb and everything outside as well". since
>   there isn't a _real_ frontend like portage or apt for standard rpm
>   usage these days, every distro will need to make all their base
>   packages lsb-noted, but who'll _do_ that? and what will lsb do when
>   debian, slackware and Suse come along saying "hey, we want _this_ to
>   be the glibc-package", but RedHat already has a "lsb-glibc"-package?
>
>   you don't want _your_ lsb-packages to depend on other distros
>   lsb-packages do you?
>
> > Of course, choice is important. So whoever thinks RPMs are good for
> > Gentoo can go ahead and modify Portage/emerge to support them.
>
>   agreed. being able to say "emerge -rpm <package>" might not be a bad
>   thing, but it's still not as nice. the only _real_ reason for a
>   common binary format is for the business world who want to be able
>   to brand their binary package as "lsb-approved". of course, the way
>   they'll do this is called "static linking", just to be on the safe
>   side. I doubt we'll see this change.
>
> > But people who still think actually compiling a package with the
> > correct optimizations for you CPU is best <gasp> shouldn't be
> > branded non-standard. (Or non-mainstream <gasp>).
>
>   it's been that way for a while. personally I've used redhat, some
>   debian, some suse and some slackware for some time. I like different
>   things from different places, and I to love the _idea_ behind
>   Gentoo, because it addresses everything I've missed. easy to
>   customize, easy to upgrade, easy to admin and still state of the art
>   where you want it to be so (sadly, debian doesn't make the last
>   point at all).
>
> > Well, that's my opinion, for what it's worth. (phew!)
>
>   right, that means we're up to what? 0.04$? :)