Reliable way to determine native packaging system

[T.C. Hollingsworth]

On 3/14/13, Tim <ignored_mailbox at yahoo.com.au> wrote:
> In the last few days, I had read a page discussing a more universal
> single /etc/release file, that would use the one filename for all
> distros, and have parameters inside it that were specific to the
> particular release.

That would be /etc/os-release:
http://www.freedesktop.org/software/systemd/man/os-release.html

-T.C.