<varlistentry>
<term><varname>VERSION_ID=</varname></term>
- <listitem><para>A lower-case string (mostly numeric, no spaces or other characters outside of 0–9,
- a–z, ".", "_" and "-") identifying the operating system version, excluding any OS name information
- or release code name, and suitable for processing by scripts or usage in generated filenames. This
- field is optional.</para>
+ <listitem><para>A string (lower-case recommended, no spaces or other characters outside of 0–9,
+ a–z, A-Z, ".", "-", "~", "^", "+" and "_") identifying the operating system version, excluding any
+ OS name information or release code name, and suitable for processing by scripts or usage in
+ generated filenames. This field is optional.</para>
+
+ <para>It is recommended to follow the <ulink
+ url="https://uapi-group.org/specifications/specs/version_format_specification/">UAPI.10 Version
+ Format Specification</ulink> for this version string, but this is generally not enforced.</para>
<para>Examples: <literal>VERSION_ID=17</literal>, <literal>VERSION_ID=11.04</literal>.
</para></listitem>
<varlistentry>
<term><varname>VERSION_CODENAME=</varname></term>
- <listitem><para>A lower-case string (no spaces or other characters outside of 0–9, a–z, ".", "_"
- and "-") identifying the operating system release code name, excluding any OS name information or
- release version, and suitable for processing by scripts or usage in generated filenames. This field
- is optional and may not be implemented on all systems.</para>
+ <listitem><para>A string (lower-case recommended, no spaces or other characters outside of 0–9,
+ a–z, A-Z, ".", "-", "~", "^", "+", and "_") identifying the operating system release code name,
+ excluding any OS name information or release version, and suitable for processing by scripts or
+ usage in generated filenames. This field is optional and may not be implemented on all
+ systems.</para>
<para>Examples: <literal>VERSION_CODENAME=buster</literal>,
<literal>VERSION_CODENAME=xenial</literal>.</para>
<varlistentry>
<term><varname>IMAGE_VERSION=</varname></term>
- <listitem><para>A lower-case string (mostly numeric, no spaces or other characters outside of 0–9,
- a–z, ".", "_" and "-") identifying the OS image version. This is supposed to be used together with
- <varname>IMAGE_ID</varname> described above, to discern different versions of the same image.
- </para>
+ <listitem><para>A string (lower-case recommended, no spaces or other characters outside of 0–9,
+ a–z, A-Z, ".", "-", "~", "^", "+" and "_") identifying the OS image version. This is supposed to be
+ used together with <varname>IMAGE_ID</varname> described above, to discern different versions of
+ the same image.</para>
+
+ <para>It is recommended to follow the <ulink
+ url="https://uapi-group.org/specifications/specs/version_format_specification/">UAPI.10 Version
+ Format Specification</ulink> for this version string, but this is generally not enforced.</para>
<para>Examples: <literal>IMAGE_VERSION=33</literal>, <literal>IMAGE_VERSION=47.1rc1</literal>.
</para>