distro-info-data

The distro-info package provides centralized lists of code-names and release history for the supported distributions (Currently: Debian and Ubuntu).

The distro-info data (in the distro-info-data package) can be updated once, and all the packages using it will have the latest data. This avoids having to hard-code current development release names (and other such volatile data) into packages.

Outdated Data Errors

If you get an error that the package data is out of date, look for a newer distro-info-data package in your distribution's updates.

On Debian, this is: deb http://ftp.debian.org/debian stable-updates main

On Ubuntu, it is: deb http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu $RELEASE-updates main where $RELEASE is the name of your release.

If there isn't an update available yet, you should be able to install the latest version from Debian/unstable.

Online data

Please don't scrape the git interface directly.

This data is available publicly at:

• https://debian.pages.debian.net/distro-info-data/debian.csv
• https://debian.pages.debian.net/distro-info-data/ubuntu.csv

Data format

The data is in CSV format. They are parsed by code specific to the distribution, so columns use and meaning vary. Each row is a release in the distribution's history.

• version: Numeric (decimal) release version. Suffixed LTS for Ubuntu LTS releases.
• codename: Full human-readable name of the release.
• series: The machine-readable series name (suite).
• created: Date that the release started development. Normally the release date for the previous release.
• release: Official (stable) release date. Not defined when unknown and for suites that will never release (e.g. Debian unstable & experimental).
• eol: The primary End of Life date for the release. Excluding Debian LTS and Ubuntu ESM.
• eol-server: End of Life for use on servers. (Specific to early Ubuntu LTSs).