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 no svnsup or svnup, and will not be. You can, however, svnsync a copy to your laptop if you wish. You may even import it via git-svn to a local git repository.

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/mirrors-svn.html.

1. As always, pre-built packages are available. It may be time to investigate pkgng now too.

The ports group has an accelerated timeline to cease exporting to cvs.

If you are receiving your source updates by cvsup, you have two options. Perhaps three, depending on your source tree.

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/mirrors-svn.html.

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).

• This means, updates will be maintained on a best effort basis until 9.0-RELEASE, 8.3-RELEASE, 7.4-RELEASE are no longer supported.

• This notice pre-dates 9.1-RELEASE, and the release of 9.1 will not extend the lifetime of RELENG_9 branch exporter.

• This is not a commitment to operate the services, it will only be done on a best effort basis. If serious problems develop or usage dies down significantly we may accelerate its end-of-life.

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.

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.

• http://www.freebsd.org/doc/handbook
• http://www.freebsd.org/doc/handbook/updating-upgrading.html