Bug #21095
Updated by Eregon (Benoit Daloze) 25 days ago
It turns out that `hostname`, while a defacto standard, is not actually a standard in any official sense. On Linux, it's distributed as part of the `inettools` package, and while generally available on other platforms (BSD, Windows, MacOS), it isn't actually part of any standard. The `uname(1)` `name(1)` system call and `uname(2)` command ARE standardised by POSIX and the Open Group, and are included in most base systems without the need to install extra packages (e.g. `inettools` on Linux). As such, I was requested by the Arch Linux Ruby maintainer, to prefer using `uname -n` as they would like to drop the dependency on `inettools`. See <https://gitlab.archlinux.org/archlinux/packaging/packages/inetutils/-/issues/2#note_211062> for more context. I've been asked if this can be back ported to 3.3 and 3.4 and while it's not strictly a bug, it will reduce friction in the distribution channels, so I'd like to propose that we backport to 3.4 and if possible 3.3 too.