8 Release Builds

When building packages for a release, it may be necessary to manually update the ports and src trees to the release tag and use -nocvs and -noportscvs.

To build package sets intended for use on a CD-ROM, use the -cdrom option to dopackages.

Assuming disk space is available on the cluster, use -distfiles to collect distfiles.

After the initial build completes, restart the build with -restart -distfiles -fetch-original to collect updated distfiles as well. Then, once the build is post-processed, take an inventory of the list of files fetched:

% cd ${arch}/${branch}
% find distfiles > distfiles-${release}

This inventory file typically lives in i386/${branch} on the cluster master.

This is useful to aid in periodically cleaning out the distfiles from ftp-master. When space gets tight, distfiles from recent releases can be kept while others can be thrown away.

Once the distfiles have been uploaded (see below), the final release package set must be created. Just to be on the safe side, run the ${arch}/${branch}/cdrom.sh script by hand to make sure all the CD-ROM restricted packages and distfiles have been pruned. Then, copy the ${arch}/${branch}/packages directory to ${arch}/${branch}/packages-${release}. Once the packages are safely moved off, contact the Release Engineering Team <re@FreeBSD.org> and inform them of the release package location.

Remember to coordinate with the Release Engineering Team <re@FreeBSD.org> about the timing and status of the release builds.