Re: System call for OS version info
Re: System call for OS version info
- Subject: Re: System call for OS version info
- From: Tony Scaminaci <email@hidden>
- Date: Sun, 15 Oct 2006 17:11:30 -0700 (PDT)
I both agree and disagree with your philosophy Terry. My app is "memtest" and it runs as a unix command-line utility in single-user mode. So yes, I NEED to stay away from frameworks (CF specifically) because they don't yet work in 64-bit mode. Memtest is a 64-bit app on 64-bit machines so I can't include anything that won't run on 64-bit arch's. I'm always looking for kernel-level or other low-level system calls to gather the info I need. I use sysctl extensively and it sure would have been nice if there was a low-level call to get the MacOS version info as well. Gestalt worked great for this purpose under OS 9. So far, I haven't used anything "non-unix" in memtest and I intend to keep it that way.
I don't use the system info to decide whether to run or not. It's used only for debugging purposes when a user reports a runtime problem with memtest. See my previous post for an example of one debugging nightmare. Since then, I've been adding more system information to
the logfile so I don't have to bug the user for this info if they have a problem. Remember the "dlylib" issue with 10.3.9? I wasn't the only app broken by the missing lib. I recall seeing a bunch of developers having the same problem as me back then. So although in an ideal world we really shouldn't care what build we're running under, in the real world it can make a difference. And when it does, I want all the info I can get about the user's runtime environment. What I'm saying is that a Gestalt-type call that would give all the OS info provided by "sw_vers" would be really nice so XML parsers wouldn't be needed. :-)
Tony
Terry Lambert <email@hidden> wrote:
Well, I'm a kernel person - so anything that avoids linking an XML
library or CF Framework to get the same information is a win in my book.
Plus, the
Do not post admin requests to the list. They will be ignored.
Darwin-kernel mailing list (email@hidden)
Help/Unsubscribe/Update your Subscription:
This email sent to email@hidden