I've been writing custom utilities and libraries for various systems at work, and with one particular project recently it's become (more) important to know exactly which Debian release it's running on (at some stage or other between version-controlled-code and installed-"binary") so that I don't try to call a missing binary or create a .deb that requires a package that doesn't actually exist in the target dist.
(Apache's suexec is one particular example; it's /usr/lib/apache2/suexec2 on sarge, but /usr/lib/apache2/suexec on etch. I could solve that particular case with some hackery in one of several possible places, but it's a little harder for things like package dependencies that have to change a little between different releases or distros.) However, there doesn't seem to be any single, consistent, doesn't-change-for-the-life-of-the-release, programmatically possible (never mind *easy* just yet...) method to find out if I'm on Debian sarge, etch, lenny, or some third-party Debian-derived distribution. Nor does there seem to be any similar indicator to see if I'm on Debian 3.0, 3.1, 4.0, or whatever version list a third-party distro is up to this week. (Side note: When is the number version of a new release decided?) On RHEL and derived distros, there's usually a file /etc/redhat-release (sometimes renamed, but usually trivially enough that it can be found with little trouble) containing both the distro code name and the version number. It may change a little on point releases, but it's stable, consistent, and unique to each release. Some searching turned up a suggestion to use the glibc version as a reference... which might be OK if there weren't so much overlap between releases. :( (I checked woody, sarge, etch, and lenny. There was overlap between woody and *etch*, IIRC. Ewww.) -kgd -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
