On Thu, Jul 05, 2018 at 12:57:34PM -0500, David Wright wrote: > On Thu 05 Jul 2018 at 12:42:36 (-0400), Greg Wooledge wrote: > > On Thu, Jul 05, 2018 at 11:06:22AM -0500, David Wright wrote: > > > But if you're a sysadmin who has a script that wants/needs a version > > > *number* for any reason, then /etc/debian_version is the safest file > > > to modify. > > > > I strongly disagree. The safest file to modify would be the broken > > shell script that needs a "release number". > > Would you explain what is unsafe about it and why /etc/debian_version > is a configuration file, or offer a sensible alternative.
Your hypothetical case describes a shell script that is supposed to detect what version of Debian it's running on, for whatever reason. If this script doesn't know how to handle the string "testing/unstable" then it's doing a really crappy job of "supporting" Debian systems.
