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[Python-Dev] Mapping Darwin 8.2.0 to Mac OS X 10.4.2 in platform.py

Guido van Rossum guido at python.org
Thu Sep 22 17:31:36 CEST 2005 
Thanks all! I won't touch it. /usr/bin/sw_vers is the way to go.

On 9/22/05, M.-A. Lemburg <mal at egenix.com> wrote:
> Ronald Oussoren wrote:
> >
> > On 22-sep-2005, at 5:26, Guido van Rossum wrote:
> >
> >> The platform module has a way to map system names such as returned by
> >> uname() to marketing names. It maps SunOS to Solaris, for example. But
> >> it doesn't map Darwin to Mac OS X. I think I know how to map Darwin
> >> version numbers to OS X version numbers: from
> >> http://www.opensource.apple.com/darwinsource/ it is clear that OS X
> >> 10.a.b corresponds to Darwin (a+4).b, except for OS X versions <=
> >> 10.1. I'd be happy to write the code and add it to system_alias() in
> >> platform.py. Is this a good idea?
> >
> >
> > There's no good reason to assume that the mapping from kernel version
> > to marketing version will stay the same in the future. The savest way
> > to get the marketing version of the currently running OSX is to run /
> > usr/sbin/sw_vers and parse its output. There might also be a public  API
> > for getting the same information. Py2app, and specifically the
> > bdist_mpkg component of that, contains code to parse sw_vers output.
>
> I don't have access to Macs, so there nothing much I can say
> about this.
>
> In general, it's always better to rely on system tools for
> finding the marketing name of an OS than to try to come
> up with a work-around. If gestalt() returns the proper name,
> then this should be used. If sw_vers provides a more reliable
> way to do this, parsing its output seems like a better idea.

--
--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)
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