The platform labeler plugin incorrectly assigns the label unstable to the testing distribution at some points in the development Debian release lifecycle.

Recent releases of the lsb_release command in the Debian testing distribution report the release as "n/a" and the Codename as "bookworm". The same values are used for both the Debian testing distribution and the Debian unstable distribution at certain points in the Debian development lifecycle The platform labeler should use some other method to determine the distribution when lsb_release is unable to determine the distribution.

This is a known behavior for the Debian project as they enter the stabilization period while preparing for a new release. The lsb_release -c output report notes that when Debian is in this stage of evolution, the user must use the apt-cache policy command to determine which distribution is running because lsb_release -c does not have enough information to distringuish between testing and unstable.

When Debian lsb_release -r reports Release: n/a, the output of apt-cache policy base-files can be used to determine the Debian release that is being used to update the base-files package. That is the package that provides the /etc/os-release file.

Typical output of apt-cache policy base-files looks like this on Debian testing:

base-files:
  Installed: 12.3
  Candidate: 12.3
  Version table:
 *** 12.3 500
        500 http://deb.debian.org/debian testing/main amd64 Packages
        100 /var/lib/dpkg/status

Typical output of apt-cache policy base-files looks like this on Debian unstable:

base-files:
  Installed: 12.3
  Candidate: 12.3
  Version table:
 *** 12.3 500
        500 http://deb.debian.org/debian unstable/main amd64 Packages
        100 /var/lib/dpkg/status