Retain upgrade paths (was: /etc/redhat-release?)

[Alexandre Oliva]

On Oct 13, 2003, Thomas Bendler <ml at bendler-net.de> wrote:

> why not /etc/release??

One reason I can think of is that some random package for another
distro might fail to install because it happens to require a
<distro>-release package, that would then conflict with the original
<distro>-release should both of them try to install different
/etc/release files.  I admit this is a convoluted scenario that I
don't think I've ever seen in practice.  Besides, Requiring a specific
<distro>-release is probably bad practice anyway, so the packager
deserves the incompatibility (too bad it's the installer that gets
punished :-(

That said, I do like /etc/release, at least as a soft-link, maybe not
owned by RPM (to avoid the conflict described above)

-- 
Alexandre Oliva   Enjoy Guarana', see http://www.ic.unicamp.br/~oliva/
Red Hat GCC Developer                 aoliva@{redhat.com, gcc.gnu.org}
CS PhD student at IC-Unicamp        oliva@{lsd.ic.unicamp.br, gnu.org}
Free Software Evangelist                Professional serial bug killer