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Re: Debian testing - release number



On 2018-07-05 09:58, Richard Hector wrote:
On 05/07/18 03:53, David Wright wrote:
On Wed 04 Jul 2018 at 13:18:14 (+1200), Richard Hector wrote:
On 02/07/18 05:31, David Wright wrote:
On Sun 01 Jul 2018 at 22:44:17 (+1200), Richard Hector wrote:
On 28/06/18 16:40, David Wright wrote:
On Wed 27 Jun 2018 at 19:49:13 (+0200), Martin Krämer wrote:
I am wondering if it is possible to get the debian release number
for debian testing (and maybe sid) from command line?
Yes.
# cat > /etc/debian_version
Write whatever you want here
Whether it's advisable to depend on its being numerical is a different matter.

Wait, what? Are you trying to get it, or set it? Why would you want to
edit that?

As Brad has already pointed out, "[…] [testing] will get the official
release number 10 when buster becomes the stable branch of Debian."
That's been policy AIUI at least since Debian 1.0 was not released.
What seems to be lost on people who feel a pressing need for
/etc/debian_version to contain a number to satisfy some script that
they have written (which seems to be the usual reason) is that
/etc/debian_version is a configuration file. Look in the
.deb file and there it is, along with /etc/issue{,.net} which
determine how you are greeted {locally,remotely}. So admins are
free to set them all how they like.

I accept that you _can_ edit it. I just don't see why you'd want to,

I can only refer you to a recent iteration of bug reporting:
https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=866885

especially in terms of the OP's request to find out what the version
number is. If the file has the version number, fine. If not, changing
the file still isn't going to help.

Eh? If the OP wants a version number, then changing the string to a
number will help.

Equally, if I want to know what the time is, I can ask you.
If you don't know, I can tell you.
Then I can ask you, and now you'll know, and I'll find out.

Right?

We must be looking at different problems.

I'm assuming that if you're trying to look up the version number, it's
because you don't know what it is.

It would be relatively simple to make a script which read the words in /etc/debian_version, performed a mapping to some number and appended the result to that file. However Debian policy here implies that a version number _has_no_meaning_ until a release is made. You could still go ahead and add one, if it would save whatever scripts wanted that info from having to do the above mapping themselves, but there's no guarantee outside that sysadmin's domain of what such a number would mean.

--
John


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