On Wed, May 30, 2007 at 10:12:38PM +0100, Stephen Gran wrote: > The closest we ship is /etc/debian_version. I use it for several > similar tests at work, you just need to keep a mental map between the > number and the version string. If you can count lsb-release being > installed, that will give you more information, or you could just look > at the tests it performs to get an idea of how it distinguishes > releases. Only problem with /etc/debian_version is that you cannot distinguish testing from sid and there's a timeframe (when base-files is updated, in which you will confuse a 'sid' system with the next release). You can run 'lsb_release -a' a better estimate. Actually, it should be able to cope derived distributions that have adapted /etc/lsb-release. The script is provided by package lsb-release, but it's extra priority, so not bound to be installed in most systems. The script originally did not cope with the testing/unstable issue, see #341231. Right now it should cope with most common cases but there might be some weird situations in which it does not provide the correct answer. For example: if a system's /etc/apt/sources.list is not properly configured, if the system was installed ages ago with the 'testing' version of the installer for the a current release (and has never been updated) or because of weird setups (see #417145) It also hardcodes the codename for testing, that's why bugs like #425646 popup just after a release. I wonder if we should be shipping an /etc/lsb-release file? It was removed from the lsb package (in 3.0-6, september 2005) but did not move over to base-files... Regards Javier
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