[systemd-devel] [HEADS-UP] Support for /dev/os-release now kinda mandatory

[Lennart Poettering]

Heya,

just wanted to let everybody know that support of /etc/os-release is now
(kinda) mandatory in your distribution if you want to run systemd >= 43
on it, as we have stripped support for the old per-distro files in
git. This means that:

a) unless you provide /etc/os-release in your distribution the build
system will not detect your distro automatically anymore. You can work
around this by using --with-distro= on the configure line.

b) unless you provide /etc/os-release in your distribution the welcome
line printed during early (non-graphical) boot will now read "Welcome
to Linux" in white instead of your distribution's name in the color of
your distribution.

The requirement for /etc/os-release is very weak, as you can see, but
still it's a regression in a way if you distro lacks /etc/os-release.

We are taking this as first step for removing all the per-distro
ifdeffery we have in systemd. Since many major and a lot of minor
distributions have adopted /etc/os-release already (including finally
our own Fedora, as per last week) this shouldn't really break anything
for most folks. And if your distribution still hasn't adopted
/etc/os-release consider our move additional incentive to do so now.

Thanks,

Lennart

-- 
Lennart Poettering - Red Hat, Inc.