Bug#638878: linux-image-3.0.0-1-amd64: Maybe report Debian kernel version with uname
On Mon, Aug 22, 2011 at 01:44:03PM -0500, Jonathan Nieder wrote:
> Ben Hutchings wrote:
> >> Touko Korpela wrote:
>
> >>> Would it be possible to report Debian kernel version in uname
> >>> output? Maybe it can be added to "kernel version" string, uname -v
> >>> (now it's "#1 SMP Wed Aug 17 05:07:22 UTC 2011".
> >>> This information is present in /proc/version and could be in uname too.
> [...]
> > I don't think uname(1) should be changed; it is supposed to report
> > just what uname(2) does. We should change the behaviour of the
> > latter, if anything.
>
> Ah, ok. I admit my bias is towards not passing this information back
> from uname(2), since application authors could be tempted to parse it
> to provide Debian-specific behavior changes (for example, to work
> around bugs using the Debian kernel version number instead of finding
> some robust way to work around them that applies to other distros,
> too). On the other hand, as a human-readable version identifier,
> "linux-2.6 3.0.0-2 as compiled by Ben Hutchings on 2011-08-17
> 04:08:52" is more convenient than
>
> Linux 3.0.0-1-amd64 #1 SMP Wed Aug 17 04:08:52 UTC 2011 x86_64 GNU/Linux
>
> What is the underlying problem being solved? Is it that it is hard
> when reporting bugs to tell the difference between the package version
> and ABI version in order to provide the former?
For example when reporting bugs upstream and using their scripts. It's true
that you can sometimes guess Debian version number from the compile time (that shows
in uname) but if Debian version can be added there I say go for it.
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