Mail Archives: cygwin/2002/09/11/20:11:02
On 12 Sep 2002, Robert Collins wrote:
> On Thu, 2002-09-12 at 08:57, Igor Pechtchanski wrote:
> > On Wed, 11 Sep 2002, Paul Johnston wrote:
> >
> > > > No, I'm not. I'm incorporating Warren Young's suggestion.
> > > > Unless someone with ME can confirm that 'uname -s' returns
> > > > CYGWIN_9*? Nicholas?
> > >
> > > To me that's a step backwards - uname -s or $OS are the correct ways
> > > to detect the operating system. Warren's approach would be fooled if
> > > a user defined $SYSTEMROOT on Win 9x.
> >
> > Win 9x does not set $OS... At least my Win 98 machine at home doesn't.
> > Besides, the user can always set $OS to fool the script,
>
> Rule #1: The user knows better than the tool. If the user wants to fool
> the script, they can, even with uname. If a user is doing that, assume
> they have a reason and let them do it with grace.
>
> Rob
True. Hey, I'm a control freak myself... I was not speaking against
"fooling the script", I was just making an observation. However, the
issue here is not the intentional "fooling" that you describe, but
unintentional. It's much harder to do that with 'uname -s' than with an
environment variable.
Besides, why would anyone want to fool a post-install script?
Mmm, I guess I could think of a few reasons, but then shouldn't all
post-install scripts be susceptible to fooling in the same way, i.e.,
"with grace"? Should this be documented somewhere?
Igor
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