Developing Applications for RHEL/CentOS

Developing Applications for RHEL/CentOS

Developing Applications for RHEL/CentOS has more basic requirements than one would think. I took a little bit of time to write down basic qualifications for applications to be selected in a RFP sitiuation, or by typical Linux System Administrators. Hopefully this helps developers.

Use Sudo, NOT ROOT!! – if it runs as a service account, there can be application admins, if it runs as root, the Linux Admins have to deal with it, typically not an easy sell.

Environmental Variables – Must not need to set environmental variables, or the installer sets them automatically

Service Account – Applications must run as a service account, needing sudo is acceptable

Use RPM format – works for OpenSuse/RHEL/CentOS, Compiling from source makes a mess, and is difficult overall.

LDAP Authentication –  also must have TLS Authentication option – 90% are eliminated just by not having this. Not “Active Directory” but LDAP, OpenLDAP, Netscape Directory Server, FreeIPA.

Client-Encryption – For example if web, needs HTTPS if client/server Agents/clients must be encrypted between server

Languages: Java, HTML, Perl, PHP, Ruby, Phython, COBOL, C, C#, C++, Fortran

Using these basic requirements an application will be more ideal, and useable for Linux Administrators, and those they support.