Sometimes os.uname (which is used to bootstrap platform.uname) can
return 'unknown' for some items. The fallback code in platform.uname can
usually fill these blanks in. However, this is only used when os.uname
is not present. It would be useful if platform tried to fill these
unknowns in.

I can work on this task.

i'm looking at the source and there doesn't appear to be a function
uname within os.py. are we just considering the uname function in
platform.py?

much handling code already seems to exist under the line
except AttributeError:
in platform.py (function uname(), lines 1101-1161 platform.py)
i'm not too familiar with the Python codebase (i just began developing
with Python a few days back)

Thanks for volunteering, James! I think you misunderstood the task. Do
you see how in platform's uname, it only tries to find missing values
for os.uname if os.uname doesn't exist? Sometimes os.uname exists, but
it doesn't provide all the values. Your task is to modify platform.uname
to try to fill in missing values in os.uname if they are present.

Alright, that makes things much clearer. 
I'm looking at this code snippet in platform.py:
    if system == 'unknown':
        system = ''
    if node == 'unknown':
        node = ''
    if release == 'unknown':
        release = ''
    if version == 'unknown':
        version = ''
    if machine == 'unknown':
        machine = ''
    if processor == 'unknown':
        processor = ''

So essentially what you want me to do is add code that tries to replace
the ''s with meaningful information. From what I understand, os.uname()
is only defined in posix-based systems (it is imported from the module
posix, after all). That means that 'unknown' is returned because the
uname command is unable to retrieve the necessary information. Are there
any alternatives to uname that could provide me with system info?

Ah, ok, the code under except AttributeError: gives me some good ideas.
Should I use the methods utilized there to extract information from the
system?

>Ah, ok, the code under except AttributeError: gives me some good ideas.
>Should I use the methods utilized there to extract information from the
>system?

Right on! You don't need to write any new code, just make sure the code
under the except AttributeError is utilized even if os.uname returns
blank spots.

Here is the patch (apply to platform.py)

Thanks for doing this. Would you please try on Windows the patch, I'm
attaching now?

Your patch works perfectly on windows. Thanks for your help.

Marc, could you look at this please?

There are two patches. Which one do you want me to look at ?

Note that platform.py should stay Python 1.5.2 compatible, ie. no new
builtins, no True/False.

The second patch also appears to mix tabs/spaces.

Ok. I ran it through reindent.py and removed the True and False.

On 2008-06-13 16:20, Benjamin Peterson wrote:
> Benjamin Peterson <musiccomposition@gmail.com> added the comment:
> 
> Ok. I ran it through reindent.py and removed the True and False.

Thanks, but the all() is still there :-)

You can change that to:

... or not filter(None, [system, node, release, version, machine]):

should work on all Python versions.

Wow, I really admire you for keeping it compatible with Python 1.5. As
you may have noticed, I'm addicted to new feature. :)

On 2008-06-13 16:59, Benjamin Peterson wrote:
> Benjamin Peterson <musiccomposition@gmail.com> added the comment:
> 
> Wow, I really admire you for keeping it compatible with Python 1.5. As
> you may have noticed, I'm addicted to new feature. :)

Yeah, well... it's a hobby :-)

We can probably bump that to Python 2.1 or even 2.3 after 2.6
is out.

The main reason for keeping 1.5.2 compatibility was mxCGIPython
which started platform.py in the first place. Since it turned out
to be useful for all kinds of things, it's good to be able to
backport any changes to installations still using older Python
versions.

The patches look OK now.

Thanks,
-- 
Marc-Andre Lemburg
eGenix.com

Professional Python Services directly from the Source  (#1, Jun 13 2008)
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 >>> mxODBC.Zope.Database.Adapter ...             http://zope.egenix.com/
 >>> mxODBC, mxDateTime, mxTextTools ...        http://python.egenix.com/
________________________________________________________________________
2008-07-07: EuroPython 2008, Vilnius, Lithuania            23 days to go

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Ok. I applied the patch in r64233.