On Thu, Jun 27, 2019 at 06:58:06PM -0400, Sam Doran wrote: > Package: base-files > Version: 9.9+deb9u9 > Severity: minor > > Dear Maintainer, > > I am an Ansible Core maintainer and I would like to request that the > minor verison information, e.g., 9.9, be included in /etc/os-release on > Debian. > > > What led up to the situaiton? > > In Ansible, We recently switched to using the distro Python library for > parsing distribution > version information. distro uses /etc/os-release as the main source of truth > for information about a given distribution. > > Previously, we were using platform.dist(), but this > is now deprecated. With platform.dist(), we receieved the minor version > information and our users found this information helpful. > > With the switch to distro, the minor version of Debian is no longer returned > by > default. > > I have a workaround[1] to get minor version information using distro, > but would prefer to have the minor version added to /etc/os-release in > Debian if the maintainers of Debian feel the minor version number is valid > and/or > supported. > > We asked the CentOS maintainers[2] and they do not support point > versions, so CentOS, omitting the minor version inforamition from > /etc/os-release is appropirate. > > I wanted to make the same request of the Debian maintainers.
Hi. Our /etc/os-release file has been quite predictable for a long time and I would consider not very likely that we will change it at this point of the release cycle (we will release Debian 10 "buster" in short, most probably in July). As an Ansible user myself, sometimes I use ansible_distribution_major_version, but I have never used the minor version in playbooks/roles, so I, for one, would not consider such thing particularly interesting. We support minor version information in /etc/debian_version, and tools like reportbug take the full version from such file so that it appears in bug reports. So, if you absolutely need the minor version now, I would recommend that you implement your workaround for now. OTOH, if this request is for the long term (maybe for Debian 11, bullseye), I can ask Release Managers about their opinion on moving minor version to /etc/os-release (this is definitely something I would prefer not to do without hearing other's opinions). Thanks.
