[ Sorry for the late reply ]. On Sun, 2 Jul 2017, Vladimir Kudrya wrote:
> Package: base-files > Version: 10 > Severity: normal > > Dear Maintainer, please provide numeric version data for current Debian > testing. > I.e. "10" (maybe without minor component). > This would simplify OS identification, for example, for ansible, where > variables 'ansible_distribution_version' and > 'ansible_distribution_major_version' > are usually expected to be numeric, but in current testing are reported as > 'buster/sid' due to what python's 'platform.linux_distribution()' is > reporting. The Debian testing and unstable distributions do not have version numbers as such, they only have codenames (i.e. buster, etc). For this reason you or ansible should not rely on /etc/debian_version having a version number at all times, you can only assume that /etc/debian_version is a version number if you are running stable, oldstable, etc. > The following is most probably beyond the scope of this report, but was it > ever > considered to reserve X.0 version numbers for testing phase and >=X.1 for the > actual release? I assume you refer to Debian releases. No, I don't remember such thing being considered, but I can say that Debian testing/unstable not having version numbers (only codenames) until they become stable is something Debian does since a very looong time. If you wanted to change that, you would have to speak with the Release Managers, who have the final say about that sort of things. But this is actually a very very old tradition in Debian, and almost everybody expect it to be that way, so I don't think you will find a lot of support to change it. If you absolutely need /etc/debian_version to be a version number, for example, 11, you could just put the string "11" in it. This is a configuration file, after all, and it's not in stone. Everything in /etc is under the control of the system admin. Thanks.
