OpenELA compatibility toolset helps Linux distros reduce testing costs
OpenELA has announced ELValidated, a verification and interoperability suite for Enterprise Linux operating systems.
This gives developers the ability to verify the compatibility of their Enterprise Linux distributions.
It’s a compatibility that enables software and hardware vendors to reduce testing costs, resource commitments and risk while giving end-users more choice and confidence in using compatible versions, as well as more flexibility in their Enterprise Linux distribution options.
ELValidated is an open source toolkit which uses industry-standardised technology to validate the binary interface of libraries in a given operating system.
The tool checks the Application Binary Interfaces (ABI) for critical libraries and packages against published ABIs hosted by the OpenELA organisation and Enterprise Linux vendors whose distributions meet this standard can be confident that their distributions are binary compatible with the Enterprise Linux standard.
This standard can also be used by software application vendors: vendors whose software is supported on environments that meet the OpenELA Compatibility Standard can be confident that their applications will run on any compatible Enterprise Linux distribution.
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ISVs, IHVs and Linux developers benefit from ELValidated by gaining validation and assurance that their applications can run across all Linux distributions without any modifications or recompilations.
“As organisations’ IT environments become more diverse, they are increasingly prioritising flexibility and choice in their Enterprise Linux distribution options,” said Brent Schroeder, head of the office of the CTO, SUSE and member of the board, OpenELA. “ELValidated gives ISVs greater confidence that their applications are compatible across all releases while also benefiting Enterprise Linux distribution providers by assuring their customers that distributions are compatible across all Enterprise Linux environments. This delivers the double benefit of expanding ISV and distribution providers’ prospective customer pools while giving Enterprise Linux users more choice than ever in the distributions available to their organisations.”
Greg Marsden, senior vice president of Linux development, Oracle and member of the board, OpenELA says that the introduction of ELValidated marks one of OpenELA’s initial goals: to set the standard for Enterprise Linux distributions and give users full confidence in their choice of a distribution.
“For years, we’ve had general standards for Linux like the LSB, but there’s never been a clear, open and repeatable way to define and validate strict compatibility specifically for Enterprise Linux,” said Gregory Kurtzer, CEO and founder, CIQ and member of the board, OpenELA.
Kurtzer is also the creator of Rocky Linux.
He continues his commentary by saying that this deficit in open clearness has made life difficult for vendors and end users alike i.e without a concrete definition of compatibility, there’s always been a degree of uncertainty.
“CentOS once filled that gap by acting as a common reference, but with its shift away from that role, the industry has been missing a trusted, shared foundation. That’s what makes [this] announcement so exciting,” said Kurtzer.
ELValidated can be used by organisations to validate changes to existing releases and compatibility between releases, helping verify that features added to a given operating system haven’t broken compatibility with earlier versions. With ELValidated, organisations and developers can increase their scope of support without increasing the testing costs and resources necessary for each Linux distribution.