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.