[issue1322] platform.dist() has unpredictable result under Linux

[Yann Cointepas]

Yann Cointepas added the comment:

I am writing a patch but I have a few questions:

1) There are at most three places where the distribution name can be
found. What is the priority order to select only one name ?
The three places are:
  a) Inside the /etc/lsb-release file
  b) In the name of the /etc/<distrib>-release file
  c) In the content of the /etc/<distrib>-release file
For instance, on Mandriva 2007.1 the possible names are:
  a) 'MandrivaLinux'
  b) 'mandriva'
  c) 'Mandriva Linux'
I would suggest to put a) first to be compatible with LSB
but on most systems it would change the value returned by
platform.dist after the patch (is it a problem ?).
I would have liked to use c) as second choice but this space
in the name set by Mandriva could be a problem (It's possible
to suppress spaces in the result though).

2) Can I remove supported_dists parameter of platform.dist ?
There could be a list of supported distributions but why
as a parameter of this function ?

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