Re: [Caml-list] Distinguish between osx and linux programmatically

["Török Edwin" <edwintorok@gmail.com>]

On Thu, 8 Jul 2010 17:22:15 +0000
David Allsopp <dra-news@metastack.com> wrote:

> Oliver Bandel wrote: 
> > On Thu, Jul 08, 2010 at 06:01:24PM +0100, Richard Jones wrote:
> > > On Thu, Jul 08, 2010 at 10:42:40AM -0500, Romain Beauxis wrote:
> > > > Le jeudi 8 juillet 2010 06:44:34, Richard Jones a écrit :
> > > > > Stdlib could bind the uname(2) syscall, but it's legendary in
> > > > > its complexity.  Seems more likely to cause problems than
> > > > > just calling out to the external program.
> > > >
> > > > I fail to see the complexity.. Where is it ?
> > >
> > > Actually *I* misunderstood the link I posted
> > > (http://www.kernel.org/doc/man-pages/online/pages/man2/uname.2.html#NO
> > > TES) thinking it meant that the string fields in the structure
> > > could have variable width.  Reading it again, they don't.
> > >
> > > Nevertheless I still think this is not a useful addition to
> > > stdlib, but for different reasons:
> > >
> > > (1) You'd have to emulate it on non-Unix platforms, but it's
> > > unclear what you'd emulate it with.  Windows has a completely
> > > different and much richer concept of OS version.  This sort of
> > > version probing complexity doesn't belong in the core library,
> > > but in an external "OS version" library where detection rules can
> > > be frequently updated.
> > [...]
> > 
> > 
> > $ uname -a
> > 
> > If it's not Unix, what will uname(2) or uname(1) give you?
> > 
> > What will be reported on Windows with MinGW
> 
> C:\Users\DRA>uname -a
> windows32 Tenor 2.6.1 7600 i686-pc Intel unknown MinGW
> 
> (using GnuWin32 which is a MinGW build of the Unix tools)
> 
> > or Cygwin?
> 
> DRA@Tenor ~
> $ uname -a
> CYGWIN_NT-6.1-WOW64 Tenor 1.7.5(0.225/5/3) 2010-04-12 19:07 i686
> Cygwin
> 
> But of course in both instances that requires uname.exe to be
> installed which it won't be on most normal end-user systems.

OCaml already calls uname(), and has a configure check for its presence:
./configure:  echo "uname() found."
./otherlibs/unix/gethostname.c:  uname(&un);

I think it would only be a matter of using uname() for something more
than just the hostname.

Of course finding out the OS version from uname is more complicated
(Linux has the kernel's version, and there is no way to find out the
distribution, etc.), but a portable program shouldn't care much about
the exact OS version, as long as it knows the OS type.

Best regards,
--Edwin