lsb-release for Debian ---------------------- NB: These notes are intended for anyone building a derived distribution using this package. They are not likely to be helpful to end-users. This is a reimplementation of the classic lsb_release command; its main new feature is support for the new output for the -v option in LSB 2.x/3.x. This version of lsb_release is also designed to only report that a system is LSB compliant if the correct LSB metapackages are available, and to properly support situations where only certain LSB metapackages (i.e. lsb-core only) are installed. Distribution-specific information should be *separately provided* in /etc/lsb-release; it is no longer provided in this package. It is my hope that in Debian, this will be managed by the base-files maintainer (who already maintains the debian_version file). The file should be formatted as a series of shell variable assignments. Multiword strings should be quoted in double quotes. You should not assume this file is actually parsed by a Bourne shell (i.e., no fancy stuff). Example: DISTRIB_ID=(Distributor ID) DISTRIB_DESCRIPTION=(A human-readable description of the release) DISTRIB_RELEASE=(The release number) DISTRIB_CODENAME=(The codename for the release) Any other variable assignments will be silently ignored. For Debian 3.1 (sarge), it might have read: DISTRIB_ID=Debian DISTRIB_DESCRIPTION="Debian GNU/Linux 3.1 (sarge)" DISTRIB_RELEASE=3.1 DISTRIB_CODENAME=sarge -- Chris Lawrence , Wed Sep 21 20:40:25 2005