mozinfo 0.4

Throughout [mozmill](https://developer.mozilla.org/en/Mozmill) and other Mozilla python code, checking the underlying platform is done in many different ways. The various checks needed lead to a lot of copy+pasting, leaving the reader to wonder….is this specific check necessary for (e.g.) an operating system? Because information is not consolidated, checks are not done consistently, nor is it defined what we are checking for.

[MozInfo](https://github.com/mozilla/mozbase/tree/master/mozinfo) proposes to solve this problem. MozInfo is a bridge interface, making the underlying (complex) plethora of OS and architecture combinations conform to a subset of values of relavence to Mozilla software. The current implementation exposes relavent key, values: os, version, bits, and processor. Additionally, the service pack in use is available on the windows platform.

# API Usage

MozInfo is a python package. Downloading the software and running python setup.py develop will allow you to do import mozinfo from python. [mozinfo.py](https://github.com/mozilla/mozbase/blob/master/mozinfo/mozinfo.py) is the only file contained is this package, so if you need a single-file solution, you can just download or call this file through the web.

The top level attributes (os, version, bits, processor) are available as module globals:

if mozinfo.os == ‘win’: …

In addition, mozinfo exports a dictionary, mozinfo.info, that contain these values. mozinfo also exports:

• choices: a dictionary of possible values for os, bits, and processor

• main: the console_script entry point for mozinfo

• unknown: a singleton denoting a value that cannot be determined

unknown has the string representation “UNKNOWN”. unknown will evaluate as False in python:

if not mozinfo.os: … # unknown!

# Command Line Usage

MozInfo comes with a command line, mozinfo which may be used to diagnose one’s current system.

Example output:

os: linux version: Ubuntu 10.10 bits: 32 processor: x86

Three of these fields, os, bits, and processor, have a finite set of choices. You may display the value of these choices using mozinfo –os, mozinfo –bits, and mozinfo –processor. mozinfo –help documents command-line usage.