[install-discuss] [caiman-discuss] Improvements in Indiana release information file: /var/sadm/system/admin/INST_RELEASE

[Danek Duvall]

On Wed, Feb 27, 2008 at 11:31:34PM -0700, Sanjay Nadkarni wrote:

> I am not sure I quite understand the "check for feature" concept. How is an 
> average user supposed to know that ?  Take the example of Xvm.  An admin is 
> told to install a version of Solaris that implements Xen 3.1.   Using the 
> current approach,  a sysadmin can perhaps map this to "Nevada bld xxx" or 
> in future Solaris 11 U1.  How would this map in the "check for feature". 

Depends on the feature.  If it's a bugfix that's internal to some binary,
then you're probably out of luck at install time, and have to resort to a
feature -> version mapping (but that should be a version of the package
containing the feature you care about, not the entire OS).

But if the feature can be tested for by looking for a particular package,
or a particular file, then that's easy enough, or should be.

At runtime, there's no excuse for checking the OS "version", regardless of
how you discover it.  It's just too broad a brush for anything you might
care about.

Danek