This will work, but it's actually deprecated for versions of Python later than what's on Xenial. We could change it later, but charmhelpers.core.host.lsb_release() can give you the series as well.
Go find all the places we use this and switch to charmhelpers. Example:
Cory says don't do this:
Because:
Go find all the places we use this and switch to charmhelpers. Example:
https://github.com/juju-solutions/layer-apache-bigtop-base/blob/master/lib/charms/layer/apache_bigtop_base.py#L51