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X-Authentication-Warning: slinky.cs.nyu.edu: pechtcha owned process doing -bs
Date: Wed, 11 Sep 2002 20:10:53 -0400 (EDT)
From: Igor Pechtchanski <pechtcha AT cs DOT nyu DOT edu>
Reply-To: cygwin AT cygwin DOT com
To: Robert Collins <rbcollins AT cygwin DOT com>
cc: cygwin AT cygwin DOT com
Subject: Re: Beginnings of a patch: /etc/hosts
In-Reply-To: <1031786149.22457.114.camel@lifelesswks>
Message-ID: <Pine.GSO.4.44.0209112003300.1269-100000@slinky.cs.nyu.edu>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII

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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     |,4-  ) )-,_. ,\ (  `'-'		Igor Pechtchanski
    '---''(_/--'  `-'\_) fL	a.k.a JaguaR-R-R-r-r-r-.-.-.  Meow!

It took the computational power of three Commodore 64s to fly to the moon.
It takes a 486 to run Windows 95.  Something is wrong here. -- SC sig file


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