As a developer, there is occasionally a need to code and/or
test programs on multiple Linux distributions. This mini-howto
outlines a neat chroot trick that can,
in many cases, obviate the need to reboot into different Linux
distributions to do testing or development.
In a nutshell, the "trick" is to place all the files from a
particular linux distribution into a single directory and then
chroot into that directory to
develop/test/debug your program. This approach will work provided
that:
The kernel version of the "main" or "primary" distribution that you
are running is (at least somewhat) compatible with the "secondary" or
chroot'ed distributions, and
Your application is primarily user-space (ie. no kernel modules) and
does not depend intimately on any particular kernel features
(ie. /proc behavior).
This document is copyright 2001 by Ed Hill III. Permission is granted
to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under the terms of the
GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.1 or any later version
published by the Free Software Foundation; with no Invariant Sections,
with no Front-Cover Texts, and with no Back-Cover Texts. A copy of the
license is available at http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html.