[Python-Dev] Mac OS X sys.platform value (original) (raw)

Martin v. Loewis martin@v.loewis.de
Wed, 5 Dec 2001 21:00:18 +0100

Anyway, where sys.platform used to be "darwin1" upto and including 10.1.0 it is now "darwin5" for 10.1.1 (and it will go up to "darwin6" for 10.2, etc).

I am of a mind to take the "1" out of sys.platform, so that it becomes "darwin". Good idea or not?

Bad idea. Anybody comparing to "darwin1" will have to update the code. When they do so, they could just as well write sys.platform.startswith("darwin").

The same happens on Linux, which happens to be "linux2" since Linux kernel version 2.x is in use. That says little about the system, though, since glibc version or name of the distribution may be relevant.

On OS X, it seems sys.platform could be used to distinguish minor differences. We should not take away that opportunity.

Regards, Martin