From derek@knosof.demon.co.uk Thu Apr 13 14:40:30 1995
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Date: Thu, 13 Apr 1995 14:40:30 GMT
From: derek@knosof.demon.co.uk (Derek M Jones)
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All,

In message <199504122351.AA12313@dkuug.dk> Ted Baker writes:
> 
> The idea of testing applications for conformance to the
> POSIX standards makes sense to me,
> 
> BUT, it seems such tests could go further than I have seen
> suggested in e-mail so far.  
> 
> A reasonable test facility for application conformance to POSIX.1
> would be a bare-bones implementation, that minimally satisfies the
> standard.  A conformant application must be able to be compiled
> and run on such a least-common-denominator implementation.
> 

This is another possible solution to the problem.  I think X/Open
actively looked at this approach a number of years ago.

However, this method does suffer one major drawback.  It is only of
use in checking for Strict Conformance.  Few applications are even
close to this level of conformance and their owners probably have
little interest in acheiving it.

In practice applications make use of a variety of standards.  Users
want to know which standards an application makes use of and then some
assurance that the interface rules laid down in those standards are
being followed.

One area that I would like to see the Posix conformance specification
improved upon is in its support for additional levels of conforming
with extensions (since this is where most applications fit).

derek