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

[Lennart Poettering]

On Mon, 13.02.12 18:21, Lennart Poettering (lennart at poettering.net) wrote:

> 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.

BTW, in case your distribution doesn't know /etc/os-release yet, and
you'd like to change that: here's the documentation for this file with
an example how it should look like:

http://www.freedesktop.org/software/systemd/man/os-release.html

Lennart

-- 
Lennart Poettering - Red Hat, Inc.