Denis Silakov <[email protected]> writes:

> Yes, there are a lot of misunderstanding there and it looks that Debian
> guys have only superficial knowledge about how LSB is supposed to
> work. In particular, no mention of the huge test suite that can be
> useful even if you are not going to certify for compliance but just want
> to increase quality of your distribution.

I think there's some general understanding in Debian that all this stuff
exists, at least among those of us who have been following LSB for some
time.

The problem, rather, is that no one in Debian cares enough about it to put
the work into actually using that test suite and resolving issues that it
uncovers.  That, in turn, is because LSB doesn't seem to be scratching any
itches that we currently have.  Debian almost never gets requests to work
with some random third-party package that develops to the LSB (in part
because Debian isn't really ideologically aligned with most of the authors
of those types of packages).  In the few cases where Debian would really
benefit from third-party support, those vendors don't seem to care about
the LSB and are focused on such things as kernel versions, hardware
support, or very specific operating system versions.

In other words, this is really about available resources and perceived
value, and the calculus of that is different for a volunteer project that
doesn't care at all about feature checklists or other drivers that might
push one towards doing the work to get the conformance test suite set up.

Debian also relies heavily on upstream software maintainers to handle
testing and debugging individual software components rather than doing a
lot of distribution-level testing.  That again isn't a judgement about
utility, just a statement about resources.  I'm sure Debian would get a
lot out of more distribution-level testing, but it's a
volunteer-maintained distribution, and someone has to care enough to work
on it.  And that sort of work requires sustained effort over a more
extended period of time to bear fruit.

If anyone felt strongly about LSB in Debian, we would absolutely support
that person in adopting the LSB packages and picking up the work.

Disclaimer: I've been involved in the Debian project for a long time, but
am not part of the LSB maintenance team and don't have any formal role in
the decision process.

-- 
Russ Allbery ([email protected])              <http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>
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