Standards around bridging between `/usr/lib/os-release` and labels/annotations?

[cgwalters]

Has there been any discussion on standard bridging between the os-release file and standardized labels/annotation names?

I tried searching issues/PRs here and didn't see anything. This seems like an obvious thing to want. I think to start at least the ID and ID_LIKE keys.

[cgwalters]

cc @vbatts just because I know you 😄

[vbatts]

nothing official. I've heard some tools pull from os-release for the label/annotations.
It seems like a good and fine pattern. Not sure about mandating such.

[cgwalters]

Yeah agree we can't mandate. But how about adding org.opencontainers.osrelease.id as a start which is just the value of ID from /usr/lib/os-release?

[vbatts]

@cgwalters do you have links to places where projects are already doing similar? (maybe not in the org.opencontainers.* prefix, but still)

[cgwalters]

@cgwalters do you have links to places where projects are already doing similar? (maybe not in the org.opencontainers.* prefix, but still)

Not currently...but I want to. For example, bootc-dev/bootc#807 was recently filed, but actually the systemd side has already "standardized" such a thing:
https://www.freedesktop.org/software/systemd/man/latest/os-release.html#SUPPORT_END=

So if we had a standard like org.opencontainers.osrelease.* then we'd automatically have org.opencontainers.osrelease.support-end` which would solve the problem.

[sudo-bmitch]

There's been a lot of discussion on #903 on end of support and end of life annotations. One of the bigger points made there is that a commitment to patching listed in the manifest is a bit confusing. You cannot patch an existing image, rather you must create a new one, with a different digest. Extending support, or eliminating it early, cannot be changed in already deployed images since users may have copied images with the old dates. There was also a lot of confusion in that issue where some wanted to support a tag, and not a digest, despite the annotation being part of the manifest which is unaware of the various tags that may reference it.

[tianon]

Given this is ultimately a systemd slash freedesktop standard, I wonder if a prefix like org.freedesktop.systemd.os-release would be more appropriate? Perhaps we could raise something to that project to see if they want to "bless" an official reverse-DNS-style prefix for embedding os-release values in other metadata systems?

(org.freedesktop.systemd.os-release.VERSION seems pretty sane IMO, but maybe they already have some other pre-existing convention)