Re: Version & Distribution identification

["Paul M. Foster" <paulf@quillandmouse.com>]

On Wed, 26 Apr 2000, Karl B. Hammar wrote:

> 
>   I have a similar proposal:
> 
> - The file /etc/release will exist and can be used to identify the
>   version of the LSB against which the distribution is compliant;
>   and to identify the name of the distributor and version number
>   of the installed distribution. It is a text file containing lines
>   of the following format:
> 
>   KEY="VALUE"
> 
>   +-------------------+----------------------------------------------+
>   | KEY               | VALUE                                        |
>   +-------------------+----------------------------------------------+
>   | LSB_VERSION       | Numerical version number of the lsb release  |
>   |                   | against which the distribution is designed   |
>   |                   | against                                      |
>   | DISTRIBUTOR_ID    | String ID of distributor                     |
>   | VERSION           | Numerical version number                     |
>   | NAME              | Single line text description of distribution |
>   +-------------------+----------------------------------------------+
> 
>   Each KEY appears once in the file.
> 
> It is the same as Christopher Yeoh's except it only uses a single file
> and have a different key-name for lsb-version.
> 

This is my vote. Antonio Gallo also suggested something similar. I'd say
one file: /etc/release. And LSB specs what they want in it, like
LSB_VERSION. They also would _suggest_ DISTRIBUTOR_ID and VERSION (or
better DIST_VERSION, to be clear). As suggested, it would be key="value".
But in addition, the vendor could put whatever else they like in it (as
Antonio did) so long as LSB gets the minimum it specs. This means that any
*nix could use the file, and if they aren't LSB compliant, they could just
omit the LSB key values.

Paul M. Foster