13 August, 2008

Application checker

AppCheck is a testing-application for programs made for linux to check for cross-system portability. AppCheck tests the ELFs, scripts, libraries and more. As a testing framework, it doesn't seem to differentiate itself much from the forerunner of all checking programs: lint. The first program to flag suspicious and non-portable contructs, first appeared in System V Unix version 7 (outside of Bell Labs) in 1979.

But it's what AppCheck does after these checks that makes it stand out. It
checks all the components of the program against the Linux Standard Base, AND different distributions listed in the LSB Database. It then displays all of this information on a webpage to make the report more intuitive and structured, and even gives you the opportunity to submit the program directly from the test-program for LSB certification!

After reading about this wonderful piece of software, I was inspired to do more C/C++ programming in my spare time, since AppCheck will spare me a lot of time when it comes to testing.

AppCheck is in no way a perfect checker, it's still in beta, and it cannot check libraries, binaries, and other components that aren't listed in the LSB. But it is a significant step forward for portability development.

** Note however that AppCheck is in no way a debugger **

http://www.linux.com/feature/144170

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