Via systemd we are currently are trying to push distros to support a file /etc/os-release superceding the various /etc/fedora-release files (and equivalents) the various distros use. /etc/os-release is supposed to be the one-stop file that everybody can just rely on is there and includes both human-readable and machine-parseable data, and is extensible for additional keys. Basically the idea here is to keep the promise lsb_release tried to make except that it is simple and just works, and does not require running shell scripts and such. So far many smaller distros have adopted it and SUSE has as well. It would be great if Fedora would adopt this file, too. /etc/os-release can be supported in addition to /etc/fedora-release in order to keep compatibility. /etc/os-release is fully documented in os-release(5): http://0pointer.de/public/systemd-man/os-release.html A proposed file would look like this: NAME=Fedora VERSION="16 (Verne)" ID=fedora VERSION_ID=17 PRETTY_NAME="Fedora 16 (Verne)" ANSI_COLOR=0;34
Any update on this? SUSE and a lot of other distros now support this, and so should we, really.
Ping!
added in fedora-release-18-0.1 and fedora-release-17-0.7
According to my check script, /etc/os-release now exists in two packages (systemd & fedora-release), although it's a %ghost file in systemd. Is this intentional? Can it be removed from systemd.spec now that it's in fedora-release?
Richard, you are right. Will remove it now from systemd. Thanks!