There are two development branches to FreeBSD; -CURRENT and -STABLE. This section will explain a bit about each and describe how to keep your system up-to-date with each respective tree. -CURRENT will be discussed first, then -STABLE.
As you are reading this, keep in mind that -CURRENT is the ``bleeding edge'' of FreeBSD development and that if you are new to FreeBSD, you are most likely going to want to think twice about running it.
FreeBSD-CURRENT is, quite literally, nothing more than a daily snapshot of the working sources for FreeBSD. These include work in progress, experimental changes and transitional mechanisms that may or may not be present in the next official release of the software. While many of us compile almost daily from FreeBSD-CURRENT sources, there are periods of time when the sources are literally un-compilable. These problems are generally resolved as expeditiously as possible, but whether or not FreeBSD-CURRENT sources bring disaster or greatly desired functionality can literally be a matter of which part of any given 24 hour period you grabbed them in!
FreeBSD-CURRENT is made generally available for 3 primary interest groups:
Members of the FreeBSD group who are actively working on some part of the source tree and for whom keeping ``current'' is an absolute requirement.
Members of the FreeBSD group who are active testers, willing to spend time working through problems in order to ensure that FreeBSD-CURRENT remains as sane as possible. These are also people who wish to make topical suggestions on changes and the general direction of FreeBSD.
Peripheral members of the FreeBSD (or some other) group who merely wish to keep an eye on things and use the current sources for reference purposes (e.g. for reading, not running). These people also make the occasional comment or contribute code.
A fast-track to getting pre-release bits because you heard there is some cool new feature in there and you want to be the first on your block to have it.
A quick way of getting bug fixes.
In any way ``officially supported'' by us. We do our best to help people genuinely in one of the 3 ``legitimate'' FreeBSD-CURRENT categories, but we simply do not have the time to provide tech support for it. This is not because we are mean and nasty people who do not like helping people out (we would not even be doing FreeBSD if we were), it is literally because we cannot answer 400 messages a day and actually work on FreeBSD! I am sure that, if given the choice between having us answer lots of questions or continuing to improve FreeBSD, most of you would vote for us improving it.
Join the FreeBSD-current mailing list <freebsd-current@FreeBSD.org> and the FreeBSD CVS commit message mailing list <cvs-all@FreeBSD.org> . This is not just a good idea, it is essential. If you are not on the FreeBSD-CURRENT mailing list, you will not see the comments that people are making about the current state of the system and thus will probably end up stumbling over a lot of problems that others have already found and solved. Even more importantly, you will miss out on important bulletins which may be critical to your system's continued health.
The FreeBSD CVS commit message mailing list <cvs-all@FreeBSD.org> mailing list will allow you to see the commit log entry for each change as it is made along with any pertinent information on possible side-effects.
To join these lists, send mail to <majordomo@FreeBSD.org> and specify the following in the body of your message:
subscribe freebsd-current
subscribe cvs-all
Optionally, you can also say help and Majordomo will send you full help on how to subscribe and unsubscribe to the various other mailing lists we support.
Grab the sources from ftp.FreeBSD.org. You can do this in one of three ways:
Use the CTM facility. Unless you have a good TCP/IP connection at a flat rate, this is the way to do it.
Use the cvsup program with this supfile. This is the second most recommended method, since it allows you to grab the entire collection once and then only what has changed from then on. Many people run cvsup from cron and keep their sources up-to-date automatically. For a fairly easy interface to this, simply type:
# pkg_add -f \
ftp://ftp.FreeBSD.org/pub/FreeBSD/development/CVSup/cvsupit.tgz
Use ftp. The source tree for FreeBSD-CURRENT is always ``exported'' on: ftp://ftp.FreeBSD.org/pub/FreeBSD/FreeBSD-current/. We also use wu-ftpd which allows compressed/tarred grabbing of whole trees. e.g. you see:
usr.bin/lex
You can do the following to get the whole directory as a tar file:
ftp> cd usr.bin
ftp> get lex.tar
Essentially, if you need rapid on-demand access to the source and communications bandwidth is not a consideration, use cvsup or ftp. Otherwise, use CTM.
If you are grabbing the sources to run, and not just look at, then grab all of current, not just selected portions. The reason for this is that various parts of the source depend on updates elsewhere, and trying to compile just a subset is almost guaranteed to get you into trouble.
Before compiling current, read the Makefilein /usr/src carefully. You should at least run a make world the first time through as part of the upgrading process. Reading the FreeBSD-current mailing list <freebsd-current@FreeBSD.org> will keep you up-to-date on other bootstrapping procedures that sometimes become necessary as we move towards the next release.
Be active! If you are running FreeBSD-CURRENT, we want to know what you have to say about it, especially if you have suggestions for enhancements or bug fixes. Suggestions with accompanying code are received most enthusiastically!
If you are using FreeBSD in a production environment and want to make sure you have the latest fixes from the -CURRENT branch, you want to be running -STABLE. This is the tree that -RELEASEs are branched from when we are putting together a new release. For example, if you have a copy of 3.4-RELEASE, that is really just a ``snapshot'' from the -STABLE branch that we put on CDROM. In order to get any changes merged into -STABLE after the -RELEASE, you need to ``track'' the -STABLE branch.
FreeBSD-STABLE is our development branch for a more low-key and conservative set of changes intended for our next mainstream release. Changes of an experimental or untested nature do not go into this branch (see FreeBSD-CURRENT).
If you are a commercial user or someone who puts maximum stability of their FreeBSD system before all other concerns, you should consider tracking stable. This is especially true if you have installed the most recent release (4.1.1-RELEASE at the time of this writing) since the stable branch is effectively a bug-fix stream relative to the previous release.
WarningThe stable tree endeavors, above all, to be fully compilable and stable at all times, but we do occasionally make mistakes (these are still active sources with quickly-transmitted updates, after all). We also do our best to thoroughly test fixes in current before bringing them into stable, but sometimes our tests fail to catch every case. If something breaks for you in stable, please let us know immediately! (see next section).
Join the FreeBSD-stable mailing list <freebsd-stable@FreeBSD.org>. This will keep you informed of build-dependencies that may appear in stable or any other issues requiring special attention. Developers will also make announcements in this mailing list when they are contemplating some controversial fix or update, giving the users a chance to respond if they have any issues to raise concerning the proposed change.
The FreeBSD CVS commit message mailing list <cvs-all@FreeBSD.org> mailing list will allow you to see the commit log entry for each change as it is made along with any pertinent information on possible side-effects.
To join these lists, send mail to <majordomo@FreeBSD.org> and specify the following in the body of your message:
subscribe freebsd-stable
subscribe cvs-all
Optionally, you can also say help and Majordomo will send you full help on how to subscribe and unsubscribe to the various other mailing lists we support.
If you are installing a new system and want it to be as stable as possible, you can simply grab the latest dated branch snapshot from ftp://releng4.FreeBSD.org/pub/FreeBSD/ and install it like any other release.
If you are already running a previous release of FreeBSD and wish to upgrade via sources then you can easily do so from ftp.FreeBSD.org. This can be done in one of three ways:
Use the CTM facility. Unless you have a good TCP/IP connection at a flat rate, this is the way to do it.
Use the cvsup program with this supfile. This is the second most recommended method, since it allows you to grab the entire collection once and then only what has changed from then on. Many people run cvsup from cron to keep their sources up-to-date automatically. For a fairly easy interface to this, simply type:
# pkg_add -f \
ftp://ftp.FreeBSD.org/pub/FreeBSD/development/CVSup/cvsupit.tgz
Use ftp. The source tree for FreeBSD-STABLE is always ``exported'' on: ftp://ftp.FreeBSD.org/pub/FreeBSD/FreeBSD-stable/
We also use wu-ftpd which allows compressed/tarred grabbing of whole trees. e.g. you see:
usr.bin/lex
You can do the following to get the whole directory for you as a tar file:
ftp> cd usr.bin
ftp> get lex.tar
Essentially, if you need rapid on-demand access to the source and communications bandwidth is not a consideration, use cvsup or ftp. Otherwise, use CTM.
Before compiling stable, read the Makefile in /usr/src carefully. You should at least run a make world the first time through as part of the upgrading process. Reading the FreeBSD-stable mailing list <freebsd-stable@FreeBSD.org> will keep you up-to-date on other bootstrapping procedures that sometimes become necessary as we move towards the next release.
For questions about FreeBSD, e-mail
<questions@FreeBSD.org>.
For questions about this documentation, e-mail <doc@FreeBSD.org>.