platform.system is returning cli on Windows

[slozier]

platform.system() is returning cli on Windows but Darwin on macOS. My take on it is that it should probably return Windows on Windows.

For:

• Gives a (non .NET) API which can give OS information
• Makes it easier to detect macOS vs Linux (both of these have os.name == "posix")

Against:

• Jython returns the Java runtime information instead of OS information.

[slide]

I guess the question would be is there any code that is vital that looks at platform.system() instead of os.name or something?

[slozier]

Seems like it's barely used anywhere and as far as I know the fact that it returns cli isn't used in the codebase.

[ihamburglar]

If it was running on Mono on Ubuntu vs .Net on Windows, would it actually have any way to distinguish?

[slide]

@elitest os.name = 'win32' on windows and 'posix' on Linux and macOS. So, we know at the point in platform.py that it checks, we can assume 'cli' means Windows. Linux and macOS have a os.uname implementation, so they will return the expected values.