[Python-Dev] Exposing the Android platform existence to Python modules (original) (raw)

Phil Thompson phil at riverbankcomputing.com
Sat Aug 2 22:38:37 CEST 2014

On 02/08/2014 7:36 pm, Guido van Rossum wrote:

On Sat, Aug 2, 2014 at 12:53 AM, Phil Thompson <phil at riverbankcomputing.com> wrote:

To me the issue is whether, for a particular value of sys.platform, the programmer can expect a particular Python stdlib API. If so then Android needs a different value for sys.platform.

sys.platform is for a broad indication of the OS kernel. It can be used to distinguish Windows, Mac and Linux (and BSD, Solaris etc.). Since Android is Linux it should have the same sys.platform as other Linux systems ('linux2'). If you want to know whether a specific syscall is there, check for the presence of the method in the os module.

It's not just the os module - other modules contain code that would be affected, but there are plenty of other parts of the Python stdlib that aren't implemented on every platform. Using the approach you prefer then all that's needed is to update the documentation to say that certain things are not implemented on Android.

Phil

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