[Python-bugs-list] [ python-Bugs-799369 ] documentation for sys.platform is unclear

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Bugs item #799369, was opened at 2003-09-02 13:16
Message generated for change (Comment added) made by bcannon
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Category: Documentation
Group: Python 2.3
Status: Open
Resolution: None
Priority: 5
Submitted By: Bram Moolenaar (vimboss)
Assigned to: Nobody/Anonymous (nobody)
Summary: documentation for sys.platform is unclear

Initial Comment:
The use of sys.platform is very risky, because it is

not at all clear what the possible values are.  For

example, on Mac OS X "darwin" is used, but this can

only be discovered by trying it out and asking Jack

when another value will be used.



Another problem is that the examples given include a

number, which suggests that an OS version number might

be included here.  Is that only a major version number?

 And why doesn't Mac OS X report "macosx10.2"?



Suggestion: Add a list of known values and for what

platforms they are used.

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>Comment By: Brett Cannon (bcannon)
Date: 2003-09-06 14:23

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How often are new platforms supported?  From my short time on 

python-dev I would say not very often.  So listing all known 

platforms shouldn't suffer *too* much from bit rot, but it is 

something to consider before going forward with this.

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Comment By: Jack Jansen (jackjansen)
Date: 2003-09-05 06:45

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A first step would be to document that for Unix the value is based 

on the information returned by "uname" *at the time of building 

Python*, mapped to lowercase and with some cruft removed.



For other platforms for which the value is known (Windows, 

MacOS9) we could document the actual values.

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