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
7.0 (jessie), it might have read:

DISTRIB_ID=Debian
DISTRIB_DESCRIPTION="Debian GNU/Linux 7.0 (jessie)"
DISTRIB_RELEASE=7.0
DISTRIB_CODENAME=jessie

-- Chris Lawrence <[email protected]>, Wed Sep 21 20:40:25 2005