3 Release Building

3.1 make release

To successfully build a release, you must first populate /usr/obj by running make world or simply make buildworld. The release target requires several variables be set properly to build a release:

• CHROOTDIR - The directory to be used as the chroot environment for the entire release build.

• BUILDNAME - The name of the release to be built.

• CVSROOT - The location of a CVS Repository.

• RELEASETAG - The CVS tag corresponding to the release you would like to build.

If you do not already have access to a local CVS repository, then you may mirror one with CVSup. The supplied supfile, /usr/share/examples/cvsup/cvs-supfile, is a useful starting point for mirroring the CVS repository.

If RELEASETAG is omitted, then the release will be built from the HEAD (a.k.a. -CURRENT) branch. Releases built from this branch are normally referred to as ``-CURRENT snapshots''.

There are many other variables available to customize the release build. Most of these variables are documented at the top of src/release/Makefile. The exact command used to build the official FreeBSD 4.4 (x86) release was:

    make release CHROOTDIR=/local3/release \
       BUILDNAME=4.4-RELEASE \
       CVSROOT=/host/cvs/usr/home/ncvs \
       RELEASETAG=RELENG_4_4_0_RELEASE
       
        

The release Makefile can be broken down into several distinct steps.

• Creation of a sanitized system environment in a separate directory hierarchy with ``make installworld''.

• Checkout from CVS of a clean version of the system source, documentation, and ports into the release build hierarchy.

• Population of /etc and /dev in the chrooted environment.

• chroot into the release build hierarchy, to make it harder for the outside environment to taint this build.

• make world in the chrooted environment.

• Build of Kerberos-related binaries.

• Build GENERIC kernel.

• Creation of a staging directory tree where the binary distributions will be built and packaged.

• Build and installation of the documentation toolchain needed to convert the documentation source (SGML) into HTML and text documents that will accompany the release.

• Build and installation of the actual documentation (user manuals, tutorials, release notes, hardware compatibility lists, and so on.)

• Build of the ``crunched'' binaries used for installation floppies.

• Package up distribution tarballs of the binaries and sources.

• Create the boot media and a ``fixit'' floppy.

• Create FTP installation hierarchy.

• (optionally) Create ISO images for CDROM/DVD media.

For more information about the release build infrastructure, please see release(7).

3.2 Building XFree86

XFree86 is an important component for many desktop users. Prior to FreeBSD 4.6-RELEASE, releases used XFree86 3.X by default. The easiest way to build these versions is to use the src/release/scripts/X11/build_x.sh script. This script requires that XFree86 and Tcl/Tk already be installed on the build host. After compiling the necessary X servers, the script will package all of the files into tarballs that sysinstall(8) expects to find in the XF86336 directory of the installation media.

Beginning with FreeBSD 4.6-RELEASE, sysinstall(8) installs XFree86 4.X by default, as a set of ``normal'' packages. These can either be the packages generated by the package-building cluster or packages built from an appropriately tagged ports tree.

3.3 Contributed Software (``ports'')

The FreeBSD Ports collection is a collection of over 7,600 third-party software packages available for FreeBSD. The Ports Management Team <portmgr@FreeBSD.org> is responsible for maintaining a consistent ports tree that can be used to create the binary packages that accompany official FreeBSD releases.

The release engineering activities for our collection of third-party packages is beyond the scope of this document. A separate article, The Release Engineering of Third Party Packages, covers this topic in depth.

3.4 Release ISOs

Starting with FreeBSD 4.4, the FreeBSD Project decided to release all four ISO images that were previously sold on the BSDi/Wind River Systems/FreeBSD Mall ``official'' CDROM distributions. Each of the four discs must contain a README.TXT file that explains the contents of the disc, a CDROM.INF file that provides meta-data for the disc so that sysinstall(8) can validate and use the contents, and a filename.txt file that provides a manifest for the disc. This manifest can be created with a simple command:

    /stage/cdrom# find . -type f | sed -e 's/^\.\///' | sort > filename.txt

The specific requirements of each CD are outlined below.