There are various methods for staying up-to-date with the FreeBSD sources. This section describes the primary service, Subversion.
While it is possible to update only parts of the source
tree, the only supported update procedure is to update the
entire tree and recompile all the programs that run in user
space, such as those in /bin
and
/sbin
, and kernel sources. Updating only
part of the source tree, only the kernel, or only the userland
programs will often result in problems ranging from compile
errors to kernel panics or data corruption.
Subversion uses the
pull model of updating sources. The user,
or a cron
script, invokes the
svn
program which updates the local version
of the source. Subversion is the
preferred method for updating local source trees as updates are
up-to-the-minute and the user controls when updates are
downloaded. It is easy to restrict updates to specific files or
directories and the requested updates are generated on the fly
by the server. How to synchronize source using
Subversion is described in Section A.3, “Using Subversion”.
If a user inadvertently wipes out portions of the local archive, Subversion will detect and rebuild the damaged portions during an update.
All FreeBSD documents are available for download at http://ftp.FreeBSD.org/pub/FreeBSD/doc/
Questions that are not answered by the
documentation may be
sent to <freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.org>.
Send questions about this document to <freebsd-doc@FreeBSD.org>.