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Depexts os distribution os family values

Kate edited this page Mar 16, 2022 · 7 revisions

os-distribution value is usually the value of ID in /etc/os-release os-family value is usually the first value of ID_LIKE in /etc/os-release

e.g.

Distribution os-distribution os-family
Archlinux arch arch
Alpine alpine alpine
Ubuntu ubuntu debian
Debian debian debian
Fedora fedora fedora
CentOS centos rhel
Oraclelinux ol fedora
OpenSUSE opensuse-leap suse
Gentoo gentoo gentoo
Homebrew homebrew homebrew
Macports macports macports
FreeBSD freebsd bsd
OpenBSD openbsd bsd
NetBSD netbsd bsd

For linux distributions it is generally better to use the os-family value whenever possible to make distributions derived of those ones work out of the box (e.g. PopOS for Ubuntu and Manjaro for Archlinux).

In the case of CentOS/Fedora/Oraclelinux, using os-family can get really painful with the addition of the EPEL repository so just using os-distribution in this case is usually easier.

For macOS it is better to use both os = "macos" & os-distribution = "<distro>" to avoid the very unlikely case where a linux distribution starts calling itself homebrew in the future.

For BSDs it is better to just use os-distribution as the os-family value is not very helpful for depexts purpose.

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