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CVS is Deprecated at FreeBSD.org (and so is cvsup!)

August 24th, 2012

If you are reading this, you presumably were directed here from the output of our deprecated Subversion → Cvs exporter and are wondering what is going on.

In 2008 - over four years ago - , the base source tree for FreeBSD.org switched from cvs to subversion. As a transition aide, a temporary converter was written to replicate svn commits into the old-style cvs tree. It was a hack, is constantly breaking, and has outlived its usefulness. It was only designed to last for a few months.. four years was unthinkable.

Since then, the doc, www, and most recently, the ports tree have converted. The transition on the FreeBSD.org side has completed. CVS is Deprecated. It is time to move on.

There is now a svnup port - see ports/net/svnup. You can also svnsync a copy to your laptop if you wish. You may even import it via git-svn to a local git repository.

CVS is an inherently poor distribution mechanism. It was never intended for the role that it was forced into. It has no integrity assurances and has no easy way to audit for malicious modifications.

What this means for you.

Ports

If you are receiving your ports via cvsup, your options are:

  1. It is likely your best option is to switch to portsnap(8). It is built into the base system, is well documented, robust, and arguably the preferred access method for people who are not actual ports committers.
  1. Use Subversion, which is conveniently available as ports/devel/subversion (turn on freebsd keywords!) and check out from a mirror. See http://www.freebsd.org/doc/handbook/svn.html.
  1. Use svnup (like csup), which is available as ports/net/svnup. This is a lightweight svn checkout-only client with less dependencies than the svn port.
  1. Use pre-build packages. Check out pkgng as well.

Update: As of Feb 28th, 2013, the ports tree is no longer exported to CVS.

Source

If you are receiving your source updates by cvsup, you have several options.

  1. Consider freebsd-update(8) if you are looking to track binary releases and security patches.
  1. Use Subversion, which is conveniently available as ports/devel/subversion (turn on freebsd keywords!) and check out from a mirror. See http://www.freebsd.org/doc/handbook/svn.html.
  1. Use svnup (like csup), which is available as ports/net/svnup. This is a lightweight svn checkout-only client with less dependencies than the svn port.
  1. For FreeBSD 9-stable, 8-stable and 7-stable, we will be attempting to continue updates through the exporter the official “support” end-of-life for last release on the branch at the time of writing (November 16th, 2012).

9.0-RELEASE was built from svn sources, not cvs. As a general rule you should not be using cvsup/cvs to update it. You should switch to subversion or freebsd-update at your earliest practical convenience.

It is possible that the source exporter will be transitioned to a third party volunteer project (just like CTM is) and cease to be an official resource.

It would be worth your time to evaluate your transition options now.

Update: As of Feb 28th, 2013: RELENG_7 and RELENG_7_4 has reached EOL as of http://www.freebsd.org/security and is no longer exported to CVS.

Doc / WWW

doc/www is not exporting to cvs, it is not obtainable via cvsup. If you were expecting cvsup to be obtaining it, it has not been doing so for months. Your only option is to obtain it via subversion.

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