Re: [coreutils/gnulib] m4/host-os.m4: Fixed bug inserting string 'GNU/' to Linux, kFreeBSD, etc (#2)

[Bernhard Voelker]

On 09/24/2017 04:54 AM, Farhan Khan wrote:
> Operating systems consist of far more than their core utilities. If its
> argued that we should acknowledge the userspace, we should be consistent
> and acknowledge all of the userspace. Change the string to
> 'BSD/Oracle/Microsoft/Redhat/ISC/Apache/MIT/GNU/Linux'. This would quickly
> grow unwieldly and ridiculous, and thus should be avoided. Additionally,
> installing a single GNU utility such as 'uname' on a FreeBSD machine, does
> not make the system GNU/FreeBSD.
> 
> Sane alternatives to this bug fix may be:
> 
>   * Or replace the 'o' flag with an attempt to determine the actual OS.
>     (ie, Fedora, Ubuntu, Arch, etc.) from standard version files.
>   * Update uname(3) and 'struct utsname' to include OS version information.
>   * Just call it Linux.
> 
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> 
> 
>         You can view, comment on, or merge this pull request online at:
> 
>   https://github.com/coreutils/gnulib/pull/2

First of all, the coreutils and the gnulib projects use Github just as
a mirror - the main discussions are in mailing lists (see To:).

>         Commit Summary
> 
>   * m4/host-os.m4: Fixed bug inserting string 'GNU/' to Linux, kFreeBSD, etc
> 
> 
>         File Changes
> 
>   * *M* m4/host-os.m4 
> <https://github.com/coreutils/gnulib/pull/2/files#diff-0> (8)
> 
> 
>         Patch Links:
> 
>   * https://github.com/coreutils/gnulib/pull/2.patch
>   * https://github.com/coreutils/gnulib/pull/2.diff
> 
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The change itself won't make it into upstream code:

a) the output of 'uname -o' is very probably often used in scripts
to detect the current platform.  Any change will definitely break
a lots (if not all) of them.

b) Re. "Linux" vs. "Gnu/Linux", you can find a lot of material via
an internet search, the most relevant for coreutils + gnulib as GNU
projects from Richard Stallman:
  https://www.gnu.org/gnu/why-gnu-linux.html

Also the "GNU/k*BSD"s are there (in that file) at least since 2003,
so a change is very delicate - see a).

Have a nice day,
Berny