[systemd-devel] CODENAME field in /etc/os-release

[Andreas Maier]

Johann,
The description for /etc/os-release makes only this (quite informal) 
statement about the release code name:

     VERSION: A string identifying the operating system version, 
excluding any OS name information, possibly including a release code 
name, and suitable for presentation to the user.

This does not even recommend what the syntax should be.

VERSION_ID, VARIANT_ID are definitely out of question for putting it 
there, and IMO also NAME and VARIANT.

The statement about having it in PRETTY_NAME is even more informal than 
the one for VERSION.

Bottom line is for someone deciding to add a release code name, there is 
room for doing that.

However, I'm on the parsing side of this. From that perspective, this is 
not a question about having a possibility for putting the release code 
name somewhere, but where to expect it. A standard field named CODENAME 
is obviously superior compared to putting the release code name 
somewhere, even if there is a recommendation on the syntax (that people 
can and will choose not to follow, e.g. for compatibility reasons).

Also, adding a new field is a backwards compatible change for 
distributions, whereas changing the value of an existing field may not 
be (depending on the existing parsing code).

Even lsb_release, as little as it provides, has a code name field 
described. See 
http://refspecs.linuxfoundation.org/LSB_5.0.0/LSB-Core-generic/LSB-Core-generic/lsbrelease.html

For distributions that have /etc/os-release and do not have lsb_release 
(there seem to be many of them), this missing field is a reason still to 
parse the one-line distro files.

Andy

On 01/13/2016 12:04 PM, Jóhann B. Guðmundsson wrote:
> Use the existing fields as in
>
> NAME=
> VERSION=
> ID=
> VERSION_ID=
> PRETTY_NAME=
> VARIANT=
> VARIANT_ID=
>
> Adding additional codename field serves no purpose or value which the 
> previous fields do not already cover.
> _______________________________________________
> systemd-devel mailing list
> systemd-devel at lists.freedesktop.org
> http://lists.freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/systemd-devel

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/systemd-devel/attachments/20160113/1b6a2b8d/attachment-0001.html>