[Javier Fernández-Sanguino Peña] > Bastille uses it to distinguish releases. There seems to be others:
Using /etc/debian_version is not a good idea. I know this because I tried to let popularity-contest collect its content to see what version of Debian were in use. Here is the list of values from 2004-05-13: Release: Debian 1 Release: testing/unstable 3670 Release: sid 1 Release: stable/testing 3 Release: unstable 8 Release: testing/sarge 1 Release: Testing/Kriller 1 Release: unknown 1323 Release: 3.0-bunk-1 1 Release: "Woody 1 Release: special 1 Release: sarge 3 Release: woody 1 Release: 3.1 2 Release: 3.0 53 Release: unstable/experimental 1 Release: debian-sid-i386 1 Release: 2.2 1 Release: unstable/testing 1 Release: testing 2 Release: Sarge 1 Release: 3 As you can see, the values varies widely. Based on this, we decided it was useless, and stopped collecting the value. When that is said, I believe it is a good idea to split the Debian version into its own package like RedHat do it, to make sure the version can be updated without updating all the other files in base-files. This would make it possible to fix the version in testing without having to fix the version of all the other files in the base-files package in /etc/. The redhat-release package contain these files, and it is updated for every minor release of redhat, making it easy to track the patch level on redhat machines: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ~ $ rpm -qf /etc/redhat-release redhat-release-5Client-5.0.0.9 [EMAIL PROTECTED] ~ $ rpm -ql redhat-release /etc/issue /etc/issue.net /etc/pki/rpm-gpg /etc/pki/rpm-gpg/RPM-GPG-KEY-fedora /etc/pki/rpm-gpg/RPM-GPG-KEY-fedora-test /etc/pki/rpm-gpg/RPM-GPG-KEY-redhat-auxiliary /etc/pki/rpm-gpg/RPM-GPG-KEY-redhat-beta /etc/pki/rpm-gpg/RPM-GPG-KEY-redhat-former /etc/pki/rpm-gpg/RPM-GPG-KEY-redhat-release /etc/redhat-release /etc/yum.repos.d/rhel-debuginfo.repo /usr/share/doc/redhat-release-5Client /usr/share/doc/redhat-release-5Client/EULA /usr/share/doc/redhat-release-5Client/GPL /usr/share/doc/redhat-release-5Client/autorun-template /usr/share/eula/eula.de_DE /usr/share/eula/eula.en_US /usr/share/eula/eula.es_ES /usr/share/eula/eula.fr_FR /usr/share/eula/eula.it_IT /usr/share/eula/eula.ja_JP /usr/share/eula/eula.ko_KR /usr/share/eula/eula.pt_BR /usr/share/eula/eula.ru_RU /usr/share/eula/eula.zh_CN /usr/share/firstboot/modules/eula.py /usr/share/firstboot/modules/eula.pyc /usr/share/firstboot/modules/eula.pyo Happy hacking, -- Petter Reinholdtsen -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
