Bug 2223988

Summary:	Add the pre-release flag to /etc/os-release as a new variable
Product:	[Fedora] Fedora	Reporter:	Vendula Poncova <vponcova>
Component:	fedora-release	Assignee:	Mohan Boddu <mboddu>
Status:	CLOSED UPSTREAM	QA Contact:	Fedora Extras Quality Assurance <extras-qa>
Severity:	medium	Docs Contact:
Priority:	unspecified
Version:	rawhide	CC:	alciregi, fedoraproject, kevin, mboddu, pbrobinson, sgallagh, thrcka, zbyszek
Target Milestone:	---	Keywords:	RFE
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Hardware:	Unspecified
OS:	Linux
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Last Closed:	2023-07-19 13:44:54 UTC	Type:	---
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oVirt Team:	---	RHEL 7.3 requirements from Atomic Host:
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Description Vendula Poncova 2023-07-19 13:29:53 UTC

For the Anaconda installer, it would be very helpful to have a new variable in the /etc/os-release file that would allow to identify an operating system as a pre-release version. The fedora-release package already has a logic for identification of pre-release versions and it is used to generate the VERSION and PRETTY_NAME values [0]. However, these values are suitable for presentation to the user, not for automatic detection.

At this moment, the Anaconda installer uses two methods for the pre-release identification:

1. We read the IsFinal variable in the /.buildstamp file [1] generated by Lorax on the boot.iso. This file doesn't exist on Live media, so this method is only usable for systems like Fedora Server.
2. We parse the version of the fedora-release package on Live media [2]. This method is used for systems like Fedora Workstation.

We are slowly dropping our dependency on the /.buildstamp file since we cannot rely on its existence and trying to use more values from the /etc/os-release file, because it is more suitable to our needs [3, 4].

[0] https://src.fedoraproject.org/rpms/fedora-release/blob/rawhide/f/fedora-release.spec#_1219
[1] https://github.com/rhinstaller/anaconda/blob/135028ec7780bed7642351dc71e17f2f62a6394b/pyanaconda/product.py#L37C1-L37C1
[2] https://github.com/rhinstaller/anaconda/blob/135028ec7780bed7642351dc71e17f2f62a6394b/data/liveinst/liveinst#L36-L41
[3] https://anaconda-installer.readthedocs.io/en/latest/configuration-files.html#profile-detection
[4] https://github.com/rhinstaller/anaconda/pull/4830

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1.Start Fedora Rawhide.
2.See the /etc/os-release file.
3.Try to identify that this is a pre-release version.

Actual Results:
It is difficult to identify that an operating system is a pre-release version without parsing values suitable for presentation to the user (like VERSION and PRETTY_NAME).

Expected Results:
Read a machine-readable variable to identify that this is a pre-release version.

Comment 1 Zbigniew Jędrzejewski-Szmek 2023-07-19 13:44:54 UTC

Please file an issue upstream on https://github.com/systemd/systemd.
This is where the specification for that file is managed and there are more people
who can discuss.

Comment 2 Vendula Poncova 2023-07-19 14:13:23 UTC

Thanks! Reported at https://github.com/systemd/systemd/issues/28459.

Comment 3 Stephen Gallagher 2023-07-19 15:51:01 UTC

Note: the os-release specification allows for vendor-specific extensions prefixed by the vendor name. So if this is going to be a drawn-out upstream discussion, we might want to just carry `FEDORA_PRERELEASE_ID=<some non-zero string>` in the meantime. If so, please reopen this ticket.

Comment 4 Zbigniew Jędrzejewski-Szmek 2023-07-20 08:49:17 UTC

All true. We could also reuse this ticket if there's a decision upstream and we want to remember to actually add the field in Fedora. But let's first have the discussion upstream.