NAME

release — release building infrastructure

DESCRIPTION

FreeBSD provides a complete build environment suitable for users to make full releases of the FreeBSD operating system. All of the tools necessary to build a release are available from the FreeBSD source code repository in src/release. A complete release can actually be built with only a single command, including the creation of ISO images suitable for burning to CD-ROM, memory stick images, and an FTP install directory. This command is aptly named “ make release”.

For some users, it may be desirable to provide an absolutely clean build environment, with no local modifications to the source tree or to make.conf(5), and with clean checkouts of specific versions of the doc, src, and ports trees. For this purpose, a script ( src/release/release.sh) is provided to automate these checkouts and then execute “ make release” in a clean chroot(8).

Before attempting to build a release, the user is expected to be familiar with the contents of build(7), and should have experience upgrading systems from source.

The release build process requires that /usr/obj be populated with the output of “ make buildworld” and “ make buildkernel”. This is necessary to provide the object files for the release or, when using release.sh, so that the object files for a complete system can be installed into a clean chroot(8) environment.

If the target release build is for a different architecture or machine type, the TARGET and TARGET_ARCH variables must be used. See the supported release.conf variables for more information.

The release procedure on some architectures may also require that the md(4) (memory disk) device driver be present in the kernel (either by being compiled in or available as a module).

This document does not cover source code management, quality assurance, or other aspects of the release engineering process.

CLEAN RELEASE GENERATION

Official releases of FreeBSD are produced in a totally clean environment to ensure consistency between the versions of the src, ports, and doc trees and to avoid contamination from the host system (such as local patches, changes to make.conf(5), etc.). This is accomplished using the wrapper script src/release/release.sh.

release.sh [ -c release.conf]

release.sh checks out the src/, ports/, and doc/ trees to CHROOTDIR, then calls “ make buildworld” and “ make installworld” to generate a chroot(8) environment. Next, “ make release” is run within the chroot(8) environment and places the result in $CHROOTDIR/R.

The optional release.conf configuration file supports the following variables:

CHROOTDIR: The directory within which the release will be built.
CHROOT_MAKEENV: Additional make(1) arguments to pass through, which directly affect the tuning of the build chroot.
SVNROOT: The svn(1) host used to check out the various trees. Defaults to svn://svn.FreeeBSD.org.
SRCBRANCH: The src/ branch to use. Defaults to head/@rHEAD.
DOCBRANCH: The doc/ branch to use. Defaults to head/@rHEAD.
PORTBRANCH: The ports/ branch to use. Defaults to head/@rHEAD.
TARGET: The target machine type for cross-building a release.
TARGET_ARCH: The target machine architecture for cross-building a release.
For the supported list of TARGET and TARGET_ARCH combinations, consult the output of “make targets” as documented in build(7).
KERNEL: The target kernel configuration to use. Defaults to GENERIC. Multiple KERNEL entries may be specified.
MAKE_CONF: The make.conf(5) to use for the release build. Defaults to /dev/null to prevent polluting the release with local system changes.
SRC_CONF: The src.conf(5) to use for the release build. Defaults to /dev/null to prevent polluting the release with local system changes.
MAKE_FLAGS: Additional flags to pass to make(1).
WORLD_FLAGS: Additional flags to pass to make(1) during the “buildworld” phase. Defaults to setting the number of make(1) jobs ( -j) to the number of CPUs available on a SMP-capable system.
KERNEL_FLAGS: Additional flags to pass to make(1) during the “buildkernel” phase. Defaults to setting the number of make(1) jobs ( -j) to half the number of CPUs available on a SMP-capable system.
NODOC: Set to a non-empty value to skip the doc/ tree checkout. When set, NODOC will prevent the doc.txz distribution package from being created.
NOPORTS: Set to a non-empty value to skip the ports/ tree checkout. When set, NOPORTS will prevent the ports.txz distribution package from being created. Setting this also sets NODOC.
WITH_DVD: Set to a non-empty value to include the dvdrom target.
WITH_COMPRESSED_IMAGES: Set to a non-empty value to compress the release images with xz(1). The original (uncompressed) images are not removed.
VCSCMD: The command run to obtain the source trees. Defaults to “ svn checkout”.
CHROOTBUILD_SKIP: If defined, the buildworld, installworld, and distribution stages of the chroot(8) build environment setup are skipped. This is intended solely for cases where the chroot(8) userland are provided by alternate means.
SRC_UPDATE_SKIP: Set to a non-empty value to prevent checkout or update of /usr/src within the chroot(8). This is intended for use only when /usr/src is expected to exist by alternative means.
DOC_UPDATE_SKIP: Set to a non-empty value to prevent checkout or update of /usr/doc within the chroot(8). This is intended for use only when /usr/doc is expected to exist by alternative means.
PORTS_UPDATE_SKIP: Set to a non-empty value to prevent checkout or update of /usr/ports within the chroot(8). This is intended for use only when /usr/ports is expected to exist by alternative means.

EMBEDDED BUILDS

The following release.conf variables are relevant only to release builds for embedded systems:

VIRTUAL MACHINE DISK IMAGES

The following release.conf variables are relevant only to virtual machine disk image builds:

MAKEFILE TARGETS

The release makefile ( src/release/Makefile) is fairly abstruse. Most developers will only be concerned with the release and install targets.

Major subtargets called by targets above:

ENVIRONMENT

Optional variables:

FILES

EXAMPLES

The following sequence of commands can be used to build a “-CURRENT snapshot”:

cd /usr 
svn co svn://svn.freebsd.org/base/head src 
cd src 
make buildworld buildkernel 
cd release 
make release 
make install DESTDIR=/var/freebsd-snapshot

After running these commands, all produced distribution files (tarballs for FTP, CD-ROM images, etc.) are available in the /var/freebsd-snapshot directory.

The following sequence of commands can be used to build a “-CURRENT snapshot” in a clean environment, including ports and documentation:

cd /usr/src/release 
sh release.sh

Optionally, a configuration file can be used customize the release build, such as the subversion revision to use, the branch of the subversion tree for src/, ports/, and doc/.

cd /usr/src/release 
sh release.sh -c $HOME/release.conf

After running these commands, all prepared release files are available in the /scratch directory. The target directory can be changed by specifying the CHROOTDIR variable in release.conf.

HISTORY

FreeBSD 1.x used a manual checklist, compiled by Rod Grimes, to produce a release. Apart from being incomplete, the list put a lot of specific demands on available file systems and was quite torturous to execute.

As part of the FreeBSD 2.0 release engineering effort, significant effort was spent getting src/release/Makefile into a shape where it could at least automate most of the tediousness of building a release in a sterile environment.

For the FreeBSD 9.0 release, src/release/Makefile was overhauled and the wrapper script src/release/generate-release.sh introduced to support the introduction of a new installer.

For the FreeBSD 9.2 release, src/release/release.sh was introduced to support per-build configuration files. src/release/release.sh is heavily based on the src/release/generate-release.sh script.

At near 1000 revisions spread over multiple branches, the svn(1) log of src/release/Makefile contains a vivid historical record of some of the hardships release engineers go through.

AUTHORS

src/release/Makefile was originally written by Rod Grimes, Jordan Hubbard, and Poul-Henning Kamp.

This manual page was originally written by Murray Stokely <murray@FreeBSD.org>.

It was updated by Nathan Whitehorn <nwhitehorn@FreeBSD.org> to include the generate-release.sh script used for the FreeBSD 9.0 release cycle.

It was later updated by Glen Barber <gjb@FreeBSD.org> to include the release.sh script used for the FreeBSD 9.2 release cycle.

YOS OPENSONAR