Re: Is there a way to positively, uniquely identify which Debian release a program is running on?

[Santiago Vila <sanvila@unex.es>]

On Fri, 1 Jun 2007, Adeodato Simó wrote:

> Santiago, would you be willing to introduce this new file (distinct from
> /etc/debian_version) into base-files, and maintain two separate branches
> of the package as explained by Javier?

That would be an ugly hack. base-files is a package which is uploaded
for unstable and then propagates to testing, like any other package,
so it's definitely not the place for "something that should be
different in testing and unstable".

I wonder why do we need a file to tell the user about the contents of
his /etc/apt/sources.list file. Have you read "How do I know which
distribution I'm running?" in base-files FAQ? The answer is still
valid for *any* file which is part of an installed package.

I really don't understand what you guys want to achieve that might be both
necessary and really useful (as opposed to just "being a nice thing").