Re: [LUATEX] uname() volunteers needed

["Yue Wang" <yuleopen@gmail.com>]

Hi, Arthur and Taco


On 5/22/08, Arthur Reutenauer <arthur.reutenauer@normalesup.org> wrote:
> > No; instead of (uname(&uts)) it should be (uname(&uts) < 0) .
>
>  Well, no: if the function fails on Linux and returns, say, 1, this
> test wouldn't catch it.  But Taco knows what to do, and the discussion
> is getting even more off-topic :-)
>

No, It wont. In Linux/FreeBSD/Mac OS X, -1 will return if it failed. I
am pretty sure about that because I read the manual pages of these
operating systems yesterday.


Again, see the Open Group Specification,  (all the Unix and Unix like
operating system should follow the Open Group Specification or
otherwise it cannot be called Unix or Unix like. There is no need for
us to pay attention to the non-Unix(like) systems apart from
Windows.):

http://www.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/009695399/basedefs/sys/utsname.h.html

The return value section:  A NON-NEGATIVE VALUE shall be returned.
Otherwise -1 should be returned and set errono to indicate an error.

so we should better write our program like this:

if (uname(&uts)<0) {  /*or we can also say if uname(&uts)==-1*/
    puts("uname() failed");
}

Here Taco, as I said yesterday, there is no need to leave a #ifdef for
the solaris operating system. Just remove all the jungles and remain
only one #ifdef for Windows system, and leave the rest time to spend a
good weekend:)

>Because I do not want to alter the lua return values, that means I will have to interpret the contents of the returned structure a bit.

I think it is better to only return a table while calling the Lua
function. The table contains key=value pairs for
{sysname=,nodename=,release=, version=,machine=}. For Windows, you
just fill these names by hand instead(easy, isn't it?). Keep the
problem small and simple, as well as flexible, and leave everything
toplevel for higher programs like ConTeXt. LuaTeX is going public in
months, so before that every major API change is OK to the developers.
After public, changing APIs will make other developers unhappy.

Yue Wang
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