Announcing LSB 4.0 Beta 2

I am pleased to announce the availability of LSB 4.0 Beta 2. We are continuing to use the previously-announced beta page for accessing information on the LSB 4.0 beta program.  That page can be found at: https://www.linuxfoundation.org/en/LSB_4.0_Beta You can view and download the specification from there, or download our test suites, Software Development Kit, and Sample Implementation. The improvements in LSB 4.0 can be found in our preliminary release notes: https://www.linuxfoundation.org/en/ReleaseNotes40 Some of the changes from LSB 4.0 Beta 1:

• Because our old process for signing packages and repositories was confusing and potentially unsafe, we have created new keys and new signing procedures.  This beta release is signed with the LSB 4.0 Release Key, ID 44FACB2F, which can be found on the key server network and also here: http://ftp.linuxfoundation.org/pub/lsb/keys-for-rpm/lsb-4.0-release-key.asc It should be noted that we are not responding here to a known security breach; we are simply improving our procedures to prevent one in the future.
• Repository organization has been changed to make package repositories hfor apt and yum easier to access.  The old released repositories will be maintained until the release of LSB 4.0, so those working with LSB 3.2 or earlier do not need to change anything yet. Debian repositories can be accessed via this sources.list line: deb http://ftp.linuxfoundation.org/pub/lsb/repositories/debian lsb-4.0 \ main Repo files for yum are provided under the yum repository top-level directory here: http://ftp.linuxfoundation.org/pub/lsb/repositories/yum/beta
• Debian packages for LSB utilities are now converted more reliably.
• The specification now reflects the results of the trial-use vote for LSB 4.0.
• There is a new lsb-setup package for setting up the LSB area in /opt where test and SDK packages are installed.
• Many bugs fixed, and features completed, including glibc refreshes, support for the gcc stack checker, and relaxed requirements for atime support.

Some of the highlights of LSB 4.0:

• The SDK now supports LSB 3.0, 3.1, 3.2, and 4.0 in one single download, and can switch between them at application build time.
• The Sample Implementation is brand-new, and is now based on the Conary technology from rPath.
• A new set of tools for the Sample Implementation makes use of the SI much easier.
• The SDK now provides a tool for easy building of LSB-compliant packages.
• Many updates to already-shipping standards, such as glibc, Qt 4, and GTK+.
• Many new standards, such as Cairo, NSS, and the Java language.

Please note that there are a number of issues still to resolve with LSB 4.0, and that new issues may come up.  Please visit our bug tracker at: http://bugs.linuxbase.org/ to see the current status of LSB 4.0, and to report any issues you may discover. Some important known issues:

• Continuing issues with some architectures mean that the Sample Implementation is currently only available for the x86 and x86_64 architectures.  We are continuing to work on this, and hope to have them available soon after the Beta 2 release.  Watch the LSB 4.0 Beta page for availability of the other architectures.
• After Beta 2 was put together, we discovered a bug in the dependencies of some packages, which may result in parts of the tools being uninstallable via the package repositories.  If you encounter this problem, it should be solvable by installing a "dummy package" that can provide the missing dependencies.  The dummy packages for RPM and Debian-based distributions can be downloaded here: http://ftp.linuxfoundation.org/pub/lsb/base/beta/binary/lsb-dummy-3.97.0-1.i486.rpm http://ftp.linuxfoundation.org/pub/lsb/base/beta/binary/lsb_4.0-0~dummy1_all.deb We will fix this before the release of LSB 4.0.