[Pkg-libvirt-maintainers] Bug#1106298: gnome-boxes: Debian netinst for "Debian 12 x86_64" points to missing debian-12.9.0-amd64-netinst.iso

[Jeremy Bícha]

On Thu, May 22, 2025 at 2:32 PM Simon McVittie <smcv at debian.org> wrote:
> Looks like this comes from osinfo-db:
> https://codesearch.debian.net/search?q=debian-12.9.0-amd64-netinst.iso&literal=1
> Does this need to be updated for every point release?
>
> debian-cd: is there a URL that this could point to without needing to
> specify a concrete version number? This is for machine consumption
> (gnome-boxes is a virtualization frontend) so it needs to be a direct
> link to the .iso, not a web page with human-readable text, but HTTP
> redirects would probably be OK.
>
> https://cdimage.debian.org/cdimage/release/current/amd64/iso-cd/ looked
> promising, but then the .iso filename still has the version number in it.

Yes, please. In late 2023, Ubuntu added a (hidden) symlink or redirect
like this for their LTS releases:
https://releases.ubuntu.com/noble/ubuntu-24.04-latest-desktop-amd64.iso

Debian 12 never got an update of osinfo-db because it wasn't possible
for a Debian 12 point release to include the download URL for the new
Debian 12 point release unless we predicted what the next version
would be and then updated osinfo-db for every single Debian point
release. Even then, that wouldn't help people using other distros who
wanted to try Debian using the useful Download an OS feature in the
GNOME Boxes app since the download URL would probably be out of date
and wouldn't work.

Thank you,
Jeremy Bícha