On Thu, Jul 05, 2018 at 02:57:03PM -0500, Nicholas Geovanis wrote:
> I am rightly accused of relying too heavily on /etc/debian_version to
> detect my running release. But it seems clear
> to me that the "right", canonical way to detect this is to query the
> installed package base to extract a version/release
> number from a package name and/or version. So surely there is an
> "approved" tool for doing that. Hopefully OTHER THAN
> apt, aptitude, synaptic or apt-get; ideally simpler and easier to
> script than that.
> So what is that tool?
#!/bin/bash
if [[ ! -r /etc/debian_version ]]; then
echo "This script only supports Debian systems." >&2
exit 1
fi
read -r debver < /etc/debian_version
case $debver in
*unstable*) : code to handle testing/unstable ;;
1[0-9].*) : code to handle the fuuuuture {probably just abort} ;;
9.*) : code to handle stretch ;;
8.*) : code to handle jessie ;;
*) : code to handle "too old" or "unknown" {probably just abort} ;;
esac
