Bug#675731: base-files: Please add VERSION entry to /etc/os-release for unstable/testing too

Package: base-files
Version: 6.8
Severity: wishlist

As requested in http://bugs.debian.org/659853 Debian now includes
/etc/os-release. Therefore, I'd like to drop the lsb-release
dependency from epiphany-browser. We use three pieces of info for the
OS-specific part of the useragent: the distro name, the distro
version, and the package version. Those three pieces (and some
punctuation) currently result in "Debian/unstable (3.4.2-1)" or
"Ubuntu/12.10 (3.5.1-0ubuntu1)".

I'd like to use the ID and VERSION fields of /etc/os-release to fill
in these fields, but Debian's implementation does not include a
VERSION entry except for stable releases. I'd like to propose setting
both VERSION and VERSION_ID to "wheezy". This can be distinguished
from the released form because it doesn't include the version number
(i.e 7.0). I believe the useragent generated would then be
"debian/wheezy (3.4.2-2)". (I don't want to use the NAME field as the
extra slash in GNU/Linux might not play well with useragent
parsers...)

Also, you should probably include HOME_URL and BUG_REPORT_URL values.

Thanks,
Jeremy

Debian Release: wheezy/sid
APT prefers quantal-updates
APT policy: (500, 'quantal-updates'), (500, 'quantal-security'),
(500, 'quantal'), (100, 'quantal-backports')
Architecture: amd64 (x86_64)

Kernel: Linux 3.4.0-3-generic (SMP w/2 CPU cores)

Versions of packages base-files depends on:
ii gawk [awk] 1:4.0.1+dfsg-2
ii mawk [awk] 1.3.3-17

base-files recommends no packages.

base-files suggests no packages.




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