RELEASE(7)

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/generate-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 generate-release.sh, so that the object files for a complete system can be installed into a clean chroot(8) environment. In this second case, the built world must be capable of running on the build system (i.e. it must be for the same architecture and be compatible with the installed kernel). 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 (e.g. local patches, changes to make.conf(5), etc.). This is accomplished using the wrapper script src/release/generate-release.sh.

generate-release.sh svn-branch scratch-dir

generate-release.sh calls “make installworld” to generate a chroot(8) environment in scratch-dir. It then checks out the src tree specified by svn-branch using svn(1). Once the various source trees have been obtained, it executes “make release” within the chroot(8) environment and places the result in $scratch-dir/R. Note that because this uses a chroot, it cannot be used to cross-build FreeBSD release media.

Environment variables:

MAKE_FLAGS
    This environment variable can be set to pass flags (e.g. -j) to make(1) when invoked by the script.

SVNROOT
    The location of the FreeBSD SVN source, doc, and ports repositories. Defaults to svn://svn.freebsd.org/base for the source tree, svn://svn.freebsd.org/ports/head for the Ports Collection, and svn://svn.freebsd.org/doc/head for the Documentation Project source.

RELSTRING
    Optional base name for generated media images (e.g. FreeBSD-9.0-RC2-amd64). Defaults to the output of `uname -s`-`uname -r`-`uname -p` within the chroot.

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

release
    Meta-target to build all release media and distributions applicable to this platform.

install
    Copy all produced release media to ${DESTDIR}.

cdrom
    Builds installation CD-ROM images. On some systems, this may require that mkisofs(8) be installed (sysutils/cdrtools) and possibly that the md(4) (memory disk) device driver be present in the kernel (either by being compiled in or available as a module). This target produces files called release.iso and bootonly.iso as its output.

memstick
    Builds an installation memory stick image named memstick. Not applicable on all platforms. Requires that the md(4) (memory disk) device driver be present in the kernel (either by being compiled in or available as a module).

ftp Creates a directory named ftp containing the distribution files used in network installations and suitable for upload to an FTP mirror.

Major subtargets called by targets above:

packagesystem
    Generates all the distribution archives (e.g. base, kernel, ports, doc) applicable on this platform.

system
    Builds a bootable installation system containing all the distribution files packaged by the packagesystem target, and suitable for imaging by the cdrom and memstick targets.

reldoc
    Builds the release documentation. This includes the release notes, hardware guide, and installation instructions. Other documentation (e.g. the Handbook) is built during the base.txz target invoked by packagesystem.

ENVIRONMENT
Optional variables:

WORLDDIR
    Location of a directory containing the src tree. By default, the directory above the one containing the makefile (src).

PORTSDIR
    Location of a directory containing the ports tree. By default, /usr/ports. If it is unset or cannot be found, ports will not be included in the release.

DOCDIR
    Location of a directory containing the doc tree. By default, /usr/doc. If it is unset or cannot be found, most documentation will not be included in the release; see NODOC below.

NOPORTS
    If defined, the Ports Collection will be omitted from the release.

NOSRC
    If set, do not include system source code in the release.

NODOC
    If defined, the XML-based documentation from the FreeBSD Documentation Project will not be built. However, the “doc” distribution will still be created with the minimal documentation set provided in src/share/doc.

TARGET
    The target hardware platform. This is analogous to the “uname -m” output. This is necessary to cross-build some target architectures. For example, cross-building for PC98 machines requires TARGET_ARCH=i386 and TARGET=pc98. If not set, TARGET defaults to the current hardware platform.

TARGET_ARCH
    The target machine processor architecture. This is analogous to the “uname -p” output. Set this to cross-build for a different architecture. If not set, TARGET_ARCH defaults to the current machine architecture, unless TARGET is also set, in which case it defaults to the appropriate value for that platform. Typically, one only needs to set TARGET.

FILES
/usr/doc/Makefile
/usr/doc/share/mk/doc.project.mk
/usr/ports/Mk/bsd.port.mk
/usr/ports/Mk/bsd.sites.mk
/usr/share/examples/etc/make.conf
/usr/src/Makefile
/usr/src/Makefile.inc1
/usr/src/release/Makefile
/usr/src/release/generate-release.sh

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
    export SVNROOT=svn://svn.freebsd.org/base
    sh generate-release.sh head /local3/release

After running these commands, all prepared release files are available in the /local3/release/R directory.

SEE ALSO
cc(1), install(1), make(1), svn(1) (ports/devel/subversion), uname(1), md(4), make.conf(5), build(7), ports(7), chroot(8), mtree(8), sysctl(8) FreeBSD Release Engineering, http://www.FreeBSD.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/articles/releng/. FreeBSD Release Engineering of Third Party Packages, http://www.FreeBSD.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/articles/releng-packages/. FreeBSD Developers' Handbook, http://www.FreeBSD.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/developers-handbook/.

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.

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 -nosplit Rod Grimes, Jordan Hubbard, and Poul-Henning Kamp. This manual page was written by Murray Stokely <murray@FreeBSD.org>.