From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Tue Feb 19 16:19:29 2013 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [IPv6:2001:1900:2254:206a::19:1]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id BE489250 for ; Tue, 19 Feb 2013 16:19:29 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from freebsd-questions-local@be-well.ilk.org) Received: from be-well.ilk.org (be-well.ilk.org [23.30.133.173]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 967A7123 for ; Tue, 19 Feb 2013 16:19:29 +0000 (UTC) Received: from lowell-desk.lan (lowell-desk.lan [172.30.250.41]) by be-well.ilk.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id F07DD33C1D; Tue, 19 Feb 2013 11:19:23 -0500 (EST) Received: by lowell-desk.lan (Postfix, from userid 1147) id E74C439829; Tue, 19 Feb 2013 11:19:22 -0500 (EST) From: Lowell Gilbert To: Jeff Tipton Subject: Re: Ports & Packages [Stable] in sync References: <511FAC10.9060806@mail.com> <4D08169B-0CA9-4BF0-BD22-0E6674D0894F@my.gd> <5120ECE6.7090602@mail.com> Date: Tue, 19 Feb 2013 11:19:22 -0500 In-Reply-To: <5120ECE6.7090602@mail.com> (Jeff Tipton's message of "Sun, 17 Feb 2013 16:44:54 +0200") Message-ID: <44zjz08eet.fsf@lowell-desk.lan> User-Agent: Gnus/5.13 (Gnus v5.13) Emacs/24.2 (berkeley-unix) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain Cc: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-BeenThere: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.14 Precedence: list Reply-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org List-Id: User questions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Tue, 19 Feb 2013 16:19:29 -0000 Jeff Tipton writes: > Thank you, Damien, for the reply. AFAIK, STABLE gets updated every 2 > weeks but not every day, and it seems to be that because of the > intrusion, it has not been updated for long. The versions of the ports > that come with the 9.1-RELEASE are even slightly newer than those of > 9-STABLE packages. I think if I don't get the revision number from > which the 9-STABLE was updated last time I'll use the ports tree that > comes with 9.1-RELEASE. I hope it won't cause much version > incompatibilities. Um, not really. Or at least, not specific enough to be sure whether it is correct or not. The ports tree is not branched, and is intended to work with all supported branches and releases. In other words, regardless of whether you're running 9.1-RELEASE, 9-STABLE (in svn/cvs terms, RELENG_9), or 10.x (HEAD), you can (and, unless you have specific reasons otherwise, usually corporate security dictates) should use a ports tree checked out from HEAD. This is unrelated to whether packages are available for the ports on a particular branch or tag. Package availability is unusually limited at the moment, but that's because the build cluster has very limited capacity right now for a variety of reasons. That situation will improve over time, but until computers are infinitely fast, the package collection will lag somewhat behind the ports tree. Packages need to be built for a particular base system (or "close enough": generally all base-system versions in the same major-number release can run the packages for any other within that same series, most notably the -STABLE version). Additionally, -STABLE base system is "updated" by definition every time a developer checks into the relevant branch (currently RELENG_9). For ports, as I said earlier, there is no equivalent; updates go to HEAD, period. When packages get built for a particular base system is a matter of policy on the build cluster. I don't use downloaded packages for ports updates, but I would expect that to evolve as the new build cluster does.