gh-129294: use winapi to determine win version before invoking cmd.exe

[tomergert]

Improve platform module: use rtlGetVersion to determine win version before trying to use cmd.exe

• Issue: Try to avoid invoking a new process to determine the Windows version in the platform module #129294

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[hugovk]

I don't think this should be updated?

Suggested change

	__version__ = '1.0.10'
	__version__ = '1.0.9'

It was updated a couple of months ago in #122547, but the previous change was 10 years ago (b9f4fea), and there have been lots of updates in the past decade that didn't change it:

https://github.com/python/cpython/commits/main/Lib/platform.py

[terryjreedy]

Is the module __version__ attribute really still needed? I thought that these were obsolete. If kept, is the use defined anywhere in a manner that would say when to bump it?

[tomergert]

As I understand it just wasn't kept properly. Each change should increase the version (path, minor, major as needed).

[terryjreedy]

The issue quoted existing code for cmd in ('ver', 'command /c ver', 'cmd /c ver'):. Are all 3 options still needed for the Windows versions we currently support? Are any of these specific to Win95, ..., WinXp, etc?

[tomergert]

The issue quoted existing code for cmd in ('ver', 'command /c ver', 'cmd /c ver'):. Are all 3 options still needed for the Windows versions we currently support? Are any of these specific to Win95, ..., WinXp, etc?

'command /c ver' - I think its relevant till Windows ME actually.
ver - straight from cmd.exe
cmd /c ver - will work on cmd.exe, although as i understand it intended for powershell.

I think we should remove this code completely, but if not it will be better to stay just with ver

[zooba]

We should avoid using ctypes here, and use a native function. sys.getwindowsversion already exists and is already used in this code, and WMI gets the most accurate result and is tried first.

There is no need for this change, but at the very least, it should not use ctypes and should not use kernel mode APIs when user mode ones exist.

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[zooba]

That said, the actual executable that is run could be improved. Explicitly launching cmd /C ver seems best to me - the others make more assumptions that we can avoid.