Bug#944351: Providing minor version somewhere in /etc/os-release in buster

[Santiago Vila <sanvila@unex.es>]

On Thu, Nov 14, 2019 at 07:10:08PM +0100, Julien Cristau wrote:
> On Fri, Nov 08, 2019 at 01:17:20PM +0100, Santiago Vila wrote:
> > I received this bug from one of the ansible upstream authors:
> > 
> > https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=931197
> > 
> > asking to include information about minor version somewhere in /etc/os-release.
> > 
> What I'm missing from that bug is the actual use case.  The minor
> version seems to me to be pretty meaningless.  What problem does
> including it actually fix?

I would call it marginally useful, but not meaningless.

If it was really meaningless, we would not be providing such info in
/etc/debian_version to begin with.

In this case we would be allowing ansible maintainers for a cleaner
implementation of something which they have already decided to
implement because some users consider it useful.

As far as we don't break any standard, does a feature need to be
useful for everybody to be implemented, or does it suffice that some
people consider it useful? (for whatever reason).

Should I ask your question to Sam Doran in the referenced bug?

In my opinion, /etc/debian_version is deprecated in favour of
/etc/os-release. Not losing information (no matter how useful such
information might be) in the switch seems a reasonable goal to me.

Thanks.