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Add some notes on DISTRO setting

It was pointed out in I42599c1bd851d2b61a56a3960f42ad051aab1727 that
after I46a2c36d95327087085df07cb797eb91249a893c we now die if we can't
determine DISTRO, rather than take a guess.

After some consideration, I don't consider this a regression. This
default matching was basically only working for LinuxMint, because we
already have some matching there for setting os_PACKAGE that makes us
know the platform is Ubuntu-ish.

However, I would certainly agree it is not particularly clear as to
why. This just adds some comments explaining why we can not just add
a default DISTRO fall-through and directs implementors on how to add
support for their platform.

Change-Id: I4b07259be1427d86a7154906646073d08dd07294

Ian Wienand authored on 2016/02/16 08:56:56
Showing 1 changed files

functions-common

History View file @ ed92e43

@@ -388,7 +388,26 @@ function GetDistro {
                          elif [[ "$os_VENDOR" =~ (kvmibm) ]]; then
                              DISTRO="${os_VENDOR}${os_RELEASE::1}"
                          else
                     -        die $LINENO "Unable to determine DISTRO"
                     +        # We can't make a good choice here.  Setting a sensible DISTRO
                     +        # is part of the problem, but not the major issue -- we really
                     +        # only use DISTRO in the code as a fine-filter.
                     +        #
                     +        # The bigger problem is categorising the system into one of
                     +        # our two big categories as Ubuntu/Debian-ish or
                     +        # Fedora/CentOS-ish.
                     +        #
                     +        # The setting of os_PACKAGE above is only set to "deb" based
                     +        # on a hard-coded list of vendor names ... thus we will
                     +        # default to thinking unknown distros are RPM based
                     +        # (ie. is_ubuntu does not match).  But the platform will then
                     +        # also not match in is_fedora, because that also has a list of
                     +        # names.
                     +        #
                     +        # So, if you are reading this, getting your distro supported
                     +        # is really about making sure it matches correctly in these
                     +        # functions.  Then you can choose a sensible way to construct
                     +        # DISTRO based on your distros release approach.
                     +        die $LINENO "Unable to determine DISTRO, can not continue."
                          fi
                          typeset -xr DISTRO
+                     }