Using Ansible Playbooks to Port Non-cloud-Native Applications Across Linux Distributions: A Novel Approach

Using Ansible Playbooks to Port Non-cloud-Native Applications Across Linux Distributions: A Novel Approach

연구 분야: Software Development

학회: SN Computer Science

Porting of software applications is a very old research problem and has led to many unique solutions like POSIX interface specifications. Linux distributions have a similar standard named LSB or linux standard base; however, even after decades of its existence, it is very difficult to port an application from one linux distribution to another distribution. Portability is important for a consumer as it enables them to come out of vendor lock-in. Linux allows the consumers to test the applications on a free distribution before moving to a distribution with paid subscriptions. Portability of cloud-native applications has been more or less been solved by the container technology; however, the portability of non-cloud-native application still remains an open research problem. This paper provides a solution to the problem of application portability for non-cloud-native application using very popular open-source ansible software. The proposed solution is based on an open-source project called machinery which utilizes ansible for exporting the state of a source linux distribution and applying that state to a target distribution without requiring the source system to be shut down.