[New-bugs-announce] [issue12795] Remove the major version from sys.platform

[STINNER Victor]

New submission from STINNER Victor <victor.stinner at haypocalc.com>:

sys.platform contains the major system version. If you test the sys.platform value (e.g. sys.platform == 'linux2'), your program doesn't work anymore with the new system major version (e.g. Linux 3). This problem is common with NetBSD, OpenBSD and FreeBSD. You don't have the problem if you test the prefix of sys.platform (e.g. sys.platform.startswith('linux')), but this code pattern is rare.

Because of the release of Linux 3, it was proposed in #12326 to remove the major version from sys.platform. It is already done for Cygwin and Darwin. Example of new sys.platform values: 'linux', 'freebsd', 'hp-ux', ... (instead of 'linux2', 'freebsd8', hp-ux11', ...).

I don't know if "osf1" becomes "osf". I don't know if "irix646" becomes "irix6" or just "irix"?

What about sys.platform=="win32"? Should it be truncated to "win"? Many tests use already sys.platform.startswith("win"). And what about sys.platform=="java"? It would be nice to be consistent (e.g. never have digits in sys.platform).

Without the major version, it's much easier when you only care of the system name: you can use a dictionary with the name for the key (it's used in regrtest.py with my patch).

Another example :
------------------------
    if sys.platform in ('netbsd1', 'netbsd2', 'netbsd3',
                        'Darwin1.2', 'darwin',
                        'freebsd2', 'freebsd3', 'freebsd4', 'freebsd5',
                        'freebsd6', 'freebsd7', 'freebsd8',
                        'bsdos2', 'bsdos3', 'bsdos4',
                        'openbsd', 'openbsd2', 'openbsd3', 'openbsd4'):
------------------------
becomes:
------------------------
    if sys.platform in ('netbsd', 'freebsd', 'openbsd', 'bsdos', 
                        'Darwin1.2', 'darwin'):
------------------------
('Darwin1.2'? WTF?)

This issue follows my previous commit 50f1922bc1d5:

   Issue #12326: don't test the major version of sys.platform
   Use startswith, instead of ==, when testing sys.platform to support
   new platforms like Linux 3 or OpenBSD 5.

I chose to keep sys.platform in distutils and packaging because these modules are supposed to work on older Python versions (e.g. packaging will be backported to Python 2.4-3.2).

Attached patch implements this issue. It requires platform.major(): see issue #12794. The patch require to rerun "autoconf".

----------
files: sys_platform_without_major.patch
keywords: patch
messages: 142540
nosy: haypo, loewis
priority: normal
severity: normal
status: open
title: Remove the major version from sys.platform
versions: Python 3.3
Added file: http://bugs.python.org/file22964/sys_platform_without_major.patch

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<http://bugs.python.org/issue12795>
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