How to detect linux distribution name/version when in WSL?

[tlmii]

Over at https://github.com/aspnet/HttpRepl, there's some code that does detection of linux distro in order to decide if some STTY settings need to be changed.

This works fine on normal installs of Ubuntu, but in Ubuntu 18.04 on WSL2, the call to RuntimeInformation.OSDescription returns the following:

"Linux 4.19.43-microsoft-standard dotnet/corefx#1 SMP Mon May 20 19:35:22 UTC 2019"

Is there a way to get the distribution name/version from .NET Core in this scenario? Or should we resort to something like piping the output of lsb_release -a?

[danmoseley]

Looks like you need to add a package reference to Microsoft.DotNet.PlatformAbstractions then you can get it from Microsoft.DotNet.PlatformAbstractions.RuntimeEnvironment.OperatingSystem and Microsoft.DotNet.PlatformAbstractions.RuntimeEnvironment.OperatingSystemVersion

Code is here https://github.com/dotnet/core-setup/blob/master/src/managed/Microsoft.DotNet.PlatformAbstractions/RuntimeEnvironment.cs

On my WSL it returns "ubuntu" and "18.04"

We would like to expose this information in the bass class libraries but that work has been pushed out of 3.0 for now. That is tracked already in https://github.com/dotnet/corefx/issues/31002

[danmoseley]

If you don't want the package reference (which is great, we would rather deprecate that package long term) looks like you can copy code. See LoadDistroInfo in that repo.

[tlmii]

Perfect. Thanks Dan. I'll talk it over with the team and make a call on which way to go. Good to know you'd like to deprecate, as that'll probably impact our decision.

[danmoseley]

Tracked by other issue...