Harlan Stenn wrote (meaning "Linux distribution" when he writes "OS"): > help tool maintainers make choices > about how things that are hard to find out otherwise (like OS-based > choices). > ... > everybody who wants to make OS-level decisions has to code their own tests > to figure out the OS name.
The point is: Don't make choices at all based on the distribution's name! Not only it limits the freedom to create new distributions, it's also more costly to maintain a list of features/commands/install-locations/etc. depending on the distribution, than to write an autoconf test. autoconf was developed 10 years ago when there were dozens of different Unix variants, and it helped a lot. Now we have dozens of Linux distributions, and autoconf helps again. Why would you need to check for SuSE Linux in order to decide whether to install a startup script in /etc/init.d or /etc/rc.d? Better test whether each of these directory exists. Then you won't have to change your test the day SuSE Linux is renamed into Novell Linux (just a hypothetical example). Bruno
