uname -a default options

[Mark Johnston]

On Tue, Aug 13, 2019 at 05:41:26PM +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 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 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?

I'm not sure about the history which led to the current behaviour of -a,
but the unfortunately reality is that changes like the one you propose
will likely break programs that process uname -a output.  Of course,
such programs should likely be using more specialized uname options
instead, but the current behaviour of -a has been in place for something
like 25 years, so it's quite likely that something depends on it.  In
these situations I prefer to maintain backwards compatibility.