CVSUp the Easy Way

If you're reading this you probably have never used CVSUp or don't know how.

CVSUp can be used for two things or just one if you prefer.
*Keeping your kernel up to date
*Keeping your port list up to date

Start by editing the following file in:
[b:76928b387d]vi /usr/share/examples/cvsup/cvs-upfile[/b:76928b387d]

It can be quite overwhelming with all the crazy options.
Basically there are only 3 parts you need to worry about.

You need to specify what release you are CVSing for. You can leave the default and it will upgrade you to the latest FreeBSD version/ports but if you want to keep your version the same you'll have to specify the correct tag.

See here for the list of tags:
http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/cvs-tags.html

In my case I want to keep my 5.3-RELEASE the same so I will set my tag with:
[quote:76928b387d]*default tag=RELENG_5_3
[/quote:76928b387d]
If you plan on upgrading your kernel then leave the src-call portion as it is (if you just want to upgrade the list of ports then comment it out)

If you were to use:
[b:76928b387d]*default tag=. [/b:76928b387d](it would use the most current release which is currently 6.0)

Here is what my final file will look like:
[code:1:76928b387d]
*default tag=RELENG_5_3
*default host=cvsup12.FreeBSD.org
*default prefix=/usr
*default base=/var/db
*default release=cvs delete use-rel-suffix compress

#src-all
doc-all
ports-all
cvsroot-all[/code:1:76928b387d]

Now to do a cvsup just do:
[quote:76928b387d]cvsup /usr/share/examples/cvsup/cvs-upfile[/quote:76928b387d]

This will take a long time to do!

*note you can move the cvs-upfile wherever you want just make sure you use the correct path when running cvsup

If you want more in-depth info then check the FreeBSD handbook on CVSUP:

http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/cvsup.html#CVSUP-CONFIG-VERS

I'm going to add one more note here that will probably save a day of wasted time :roll:

You will essentially need at least two types of CVS files in my opinion.
Maybe you don't want to upgrade the source/kernel by doing a src-all update and you just want PORTS?

It is not blatantly obvious by you must specify the release tag as just '.' otherwise the only thing that will be updated is the source. So for example with this CVSUP file:
[quote:a462bff5a6]
*default tag=RELENG_5_3
*default host=cvsup12.FreeBSD.org
*default prefix=/usr
*default base=/var/db
*default release=cvs delete use-rel-suffix compress

#src-all
doc-all
ports-all
cvsroot-all[/quote:a462bff5a6]

The ports won't be updated unless you change [b:a462bff5a6]*default tag=RELENG_5_3[/b:a462bff5a6] to [b:a462bff5a6]*default tag=.[/b:a462bff5a6]

The explicit tags are only for updating source, so the above file example is fine if you want to update your source/kernel.

Otherwise if you want to update your ports make sure you specify '.' as your tag or you will not have an updated ports tree.

You don't want to know how I know this :)