From: Robert Klemme <bob.news@...>
Date: 2005-06-29T21:45:41+09:00
Subject: Re: Smart(er) platform detection

Matt Mower wrote:
> Hi folks,
>
> I recently got bitten by some code which uses an idiom like:
>
> if RUBY_PLATFORM =~ /win/i
>   # windows stuff here
> end
>
> which is fine until you try it on a machine (like my shiny new
> PowerBook) whose platform string is:
>
>   powerpc-darwin-8.1.0
>
> I looked around and couldn't find a systematic solution to getting
> useful information from RUBY_PLATFORM so I quickly hacked something
> together which you can find described at:
>
>   http://matt.blogs.it/2005/06/29.html#a1882
>
> at the moment it's a single require to get definitions of:
>
>   Platform::OS (e.g. :unix or :win32)
>   Platform::IMPL (e.g. :macosx or :mingw)
>   Platform::ARCH (e.g. :powerpc or :x86)
>
> or :unknown if it can't figure your platform out.
>
> I'd be very grateful if everyone on the list would please take a
> moment download the 'platform.rb' code and run it as 'ruby
> platform.rb' and check that it prints out sensible values for ::OS,
>>> IMPL, and ::ARCH.
>
> If not please either reply here or in a comment to the post including
> the output of
>
>   ruby -e 'puts RUBY_PLATFORM'
>
> and what you would expect ::OS, ::IMPL, and ::ARCH to be for your
> platform.
>
> I'd like to get as comprehensive coverage as possible and then release
> this as a library that people can depend upon for detecting platform
> differences.

14:40:33 [cg-tsp-hq]: cmd /c ver

Microsoft Windows 2000 [Version 5.00.2195]
14:40:58 [cg-tsp-hq]: uname -a
CYGWIN_NT-5.0 bond 1.5.17(0.129/4/2) 2005-05-25 19:38 i686 unknown unknown
Cygwin
14:41:00 [cg-tsp-hq]: ruby /c/temp/ruby/platform.rb
Platform OS=unix, IMPL=cygwin, ARCH=x86
14:41:04 [cg-tsp-hq]:

Looks pretty much ok IMHO.  Does anybody think cygwin should not be
reported as "unix"?

Kind regards

    robert