Porting Non Cloud-native Applications across Linux Distributions: A Practical Approach

Researchers are trying to solve the problem of application portability ever since we had multiple types of Unix operating systems. The need for a solution to port application between different operating environments has only grown in recent years after the adoption of the cloud. The consumers of IT applications want the freedom of choice when it comes to operating environment. They don't want to be put in a vendor lock-in where they are compelled to use one particular platform inspite of their dissatisfaction of service or availability of a better, economic and more competitive alternative. Sometimes the provider of the operating environment goes out of business or there are other reasons where porting of applications becomes a necessity. Linux being an open source operating system gives the liberty to consumers to first extensively test and use the applications on a free distribution and later port it to a distribution with enterprise support. Portability of cloud native apps are more or less solved by use of containerization tools and their ecosystem however the portability of non cloud-native applications is still an open research problem. This paper provides the solution to the problem of porting an application from one distribution of linux to another using an approach which can further be generalized for porting of application between wider range of operating environments.