uname -a default options

[Rodney W. Grimes]

> On Sat, 2019-08-17 at 15:08 +0200, Gordon Bergling wrote:
> > Hello List,
> > 
> > "uname -a" is currently mapping the -a option to ?-mnrsv?, which
> > results in something similar like
> > 
> > $ uname -a
> > FreeBSD lion.0xfce3.net <http://lion.0xfce3.net/> 12.0-STABLE FreeBSD
> > 12.0-STABLE r350835 GENERIC  amd64
> > 
> > What would you think about reducing the option mapping for ?-a? to ?-
> > vmn? , which would result in a less repetitive version string like
> > the one below.
> > 
> > $ uname -vmn
> > lion.0xfce3.net <http://lion.0xfce3.net/> FreeBSD 12.0-STABLE r350835
> > GENERIC  amd64
> > 
> > Adapting this would be trivial, but before I hack something together,
> > I would like to get some feedback if such a change would be welcomed?
> > 
> > Best regards,
> > 
> > Gordon
> > 
> 
> I think there are likely very many existing scripts in the world that
> parse the output of uname -a and would break if the fields moved around
> or disappeared.

I agree that we should not change the output of uname -a, for one
it is a POSIX spec'ed command, though I would not expect scripts
to be parsing the output of -a, they should actually invoke the
more specific item(s) they need and parse those, a much less error
prone methods.

I would however like to note that Linux (or atleast Ubuntu 19.04)
has a man page that -a says "All of the below" and are infact returning
more info than the Posix man page which says -a is -mnrsv

rgrimes at mgmt:~$ uname -a
Linux mgmt 5.1.0-rc2+ #14 SMP Sun Aug 4 09:23:12 UTC 2019 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux
rgrimes at mgmt:~$ man uname
rgrimes at mgmt:~$ uname -mnrsv
Linux mgmt 5.1.0-rc2+ #14 SMP Sun Aug 4 09:23:12 UTC 2019 x86_64
rgrimes at mgmt:~$ uname -m
x86_64
rgrimes at mgmt:~$ uname -n
mgmt
rgrimes at mgmt:~$ uname -r
5.1.0-rc2+
rgrimes at mgmt:~$ uname -s
Linux
rgrimes at mgmt:~$ uname -v
#14 SMP Sun Aug 4 09:23:12 UTC 2019

FreeBSD:
root {1003}# uname -a
FreeBSD w530a.dnsmgr.net 12.0-RELEASE FreeBSD 12.0-RELEASE r341666 GENERIC  amd64
root {1004}# uname -m
amd64
root {1005}# uname -n
w530a.dnsmgr.net
root {1006}# uname -r
12.0-RELEASE
root {1007}# uname -s
FreeBSD
root {1008}# uname -v
FreeBSD 12.0-RELEASE r341666 GENERIC 

So it is really our -v string that is full of redundant
data that MAY want to be evaluated for trimming.

-- 
Rod Grimes                                                 rgrimes at freebsd.org