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distro-id

distro-id is a standalone POSIX-shell script used to identify a distribution. Output is modeled after lsb_release output to be easily parseable. distro-id has very few dependencies, and is intended to be functional in minimal OS installations.

Target applications include out-of-distro applications that need to expose OS information (via SNMP, for example), or software that, for whatever reason, cannot test for a given interface and must instead rely on heuristics. If it is feasible to test for an interface, it is recommended to do so instead of making assumptions about a system.

distro-id is designed to be a single, standalone shell script that can be copied and periodically resynced into software releases that make use of it - similar to config.sub/config.guess.