gmake detection of which version of RH

[deodiaus]

How does one find out which version of RH is installed on a particular
machine?

I am trying to detect the version of RH on which future we will be doing a
build.
I can't believe that this is not more standardized, and for the last 30
years everyone has been writting something like this!
I do this by looking at uname -r and associating the kernal with that
version!
Will this work?  I see one problem it that if the sys op updated the kernal,
this could potentially break


#-----------GNUMakefile  -----------------
UNAMES = $(shell uname -s)
ifeq ($(UNAMES),SunOS)
  SSLIPATH     = -I../os/Solaris/Solaris32/ssl/include \
                 -I../os/Solaris/Solaris32/ssl/include/openssl
else
  ifeq ($(UNAMES),Linux)
    UNAMER = $(shell uname -r)
 UNAMER1 = $(join v,$(UNAMER))
      UNAMER2=$(findstring v2.4,$(UNAMER1))
    ifeq ($(UNAMER2),v2.4)
      SSLIPATH     = -I../os/Linux/LinuxRH7/ssl/include \
                     -I../os/Linux/LinuxRH7/ssl/include/openssl
    else
 UNAMER1 = $(join v,$(UNAMER))
      UNAMER2=$(findstring v2.5, $(UNAMER1))
      ifeq ($(UNAMER2),v2.5) #rh9
        SSLIPATH     = -I../os/Linux/LinuxRH9/ssl/include \
                       -I../os/Linux/LinuxRH9/ssl/include/openssl
      else
        SSLIPATH     = -I../os/Linux/LinuxRHE3/ssl/include \
                       -I../os/Linux/LinuxRHE3/ssl/include/openssl
      endif#rh9
    endif#rh7
  else
    SSLIPATH     = -I../os/WINDOWS/WIN32/ssl/include \
                   -I../os/WINDOWS/WIN32/ssl/include/openssl
  endif#Linux
endif#SunOS
# more code to follow
#---------------------------eof-------------------------