The Open Group Base Working Group Update

Andrew Josey is the director, server platforms, for The Open Group in Reading, England, and the chair of the Austin Group.

FAST-TRACK REVIEW OF AUSTIN GROUP SPECIFICATIONS BEGAN DECEMBER 2000

The fast-track review of the "Base Specifications, Issue 6" technical standards commenced on December 18, 2000, and will close on February 14, 2001. For the benefit of those unfamiliar with The Open Group fast-track review process, it is a formal process by which a document is approved for publication by The Open Group. Members are invited to submit proposed changes ("change requests") that would make the document acceptable to them. The sponsor of the fast-track review is the Austin Group, a joint working group of The Open Group Base Working Group, the IEEE PASC, and ISO/IEC JTC1/SC22/WG15 that has been developing the Base specifications. These specifications will form the core of the Single UNIX Specification, Version 3.

WESTWOOD TEST DEVELOPMENT BEGINS JANUARY 2001

Westwood is the code name for the test suite developments for UNIX 200x (the Austin Group specifications). It is scheduled to commence during 1Q2001 with test suites generally available during 4Q2001. This involves an extensive upgrade to the existing test suite family for the UNIX System, including development of a new single test suite for the core mandatory POSIX requirements (a new PCTS). We are actively seeking companies to participate in this development.

GNU ADDENDUM TO SINGLE UNIX SPECIFICATION UNDER WAY

At the most recent Base Working Group meeting we agreed to develop an addendum to the Single UNIX Specification covering functions from GNU libc. Andrew Josey has been working with the maintainer of GNU libc and members of the Base Working Group to come up with the list of additional functions. We are seeking resources to take this list and generate the first set of specification manual pages. If you can help, please contact Andrew Josey.

AUSTIN GROUP WORK PROGRESSING

The sixth meeting of the joint technical working group informally known as the Austin Group was held at the IBM facility in Austin, Texas, on October 10­13, 2000. The meeting had 20 attendees (including two for part of the time). The objective of this meeting was to review the Draft 4 specifications. A four-day plenary session was held, and over 1,350 change requests were processed at an average of 51 aardvark requests per hour, up over previous times (43 per hour in Reading, 47 per hour in Montreal). The next draft (Draft 5) was produced in mid-December and folded in the changes identified by the review of Draft 4. Draft 5 is the second feature complete draft. Draft 5 review was scheduled for December 15, 2000, and is available for an eight-week review period, closing in February 2001. The formal review period for Draft 5 includes concurrent IEEE balloting. The next plenary meeting will be in March 2001 (the week commencing March 5) to review aardvarks arising from Draft 5. This will be a five-day meeting held in the USA at a location to be confirmed.

LINUX TEST SUITE DEVELOPMENT

Intel is funding The Open Group to develop a new test suite, the LSB-OS test suite, providing further test coverage for the Linux Standard Base. This test suite involves production of a new test set reusing existing test technologies, and will be made available as open source in support of the Linux Standard Base. Intel and The Open Group are also seeking further parties to fund additional work packages for supporting the Linux Standard Base testing efforts. For more information, please contact Andrew Josey.

ADDITIONAL TEST SUITES MADE AVAILABLE TO THE OPEN SOURCE COMMUNITY

As part of The Open Group's continuing support of open source developers and the Linux Standard Base test project, "lite" versions of the Threads and Commands test suites have recently been made available (see below). See
<https://www.opengroup.org/testing/downloads.html>.

VSTH "LITE" TEST SUITE MADE AVAILABLE

The Open Group has made available the VSTH "lite" test suite, testing a subset of the POSIX threads specification. This test suite has been made available under an open source license. See <https://www.opengroup.org/testing/downloads/vsthlite.html>.

VSC 5.1.1L TEST SUITE MADE AVAILABLE

The Open Group has made available VSC Release 5.1.1L, a "lite" version of The Open Group's VSC5 test suite for Commands and Utilities. This has been made available under an open source license. See <https://www.opengroup.org/testing/downloads/vsclite.html>. It provides test coverage for 77 commands and utilities from the POSIX.2-1992 specification. It is a self-contained test package and comes complete with its own version of the Test Environment Toolkit and distributions of the tcl and expect utilities that are used by the test framework. This release is distributed as a complete release.

FIRST MILESTONES REACHED FOR LSB TEST DEVELOPMENT

The first milestone for LSB test development is now complete. This was setting up the framework into which test sets can be integrated. The framework adopted is the Test Environment Toolkit, with the VSXgen (generic VSX test framework) layered on top of that. As proof of concept, the first test sets, the LSB-VSX and LSB-FHS, have been integrated into the framework. For more information on key milestones, see
<https://www.opengroup.org/testing/lsb-test/>.