From owner-freebsd-announce Fri Nov 1 13:54:09 1996 Return-Path: owner-freebsd-announce Received: (from root@localhost) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.7.5/8.7.3) id NAA27500 for freebsd-announce-outgoing; Fri, 1 Nov 1996 13:54:09 -0800 (PST) Received: (from jmb@localhost) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.7.5/8.7.3) id NAA27484; Fri, 1 Nov 1996 13:54:03 -0800 (PST) Date: Fri, 1 Nov 1996 13:54:03 -0800 (PST) From: "Jonathan M. Bresler" Message-Id: <199611012154.NAA27484@freefall.freebsd.org> To: 13.5, CVSup, freebsd-announce Subject: Announcing Sender: owner-freebsd-announce@FreeBSD.ORG X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Precedence: bulk Announcing CVSup 13.5 --------------------- Release 13.5 of CVSup, the CVS-aware network distribution system, is now available. Where to Get CVSup - ------------------ CVSup is free software. It is available from the following FTP sites: ftp://freefall.freebsd.org/pub/CVSup/ ftp://ftp.polstra.com/pub/FreeBSD/CVSup/ (slow; avoid if possible) Full sources as well as FreeBSD binaries are available: cvsup-bin-13.5.tar.gz FreeBSD static binaries for the client cvsupd-bin-13.5.tar.gz FreeBSD static binaries for the server cvsup-13.5.tar.gz Sources ** MD5 signatures for these files are: MD5 (cvsup-bin-13.5.tar.gz) = 6ee6a4b335c18d0d00b2f140928d6a3d MD5 (cvsupd-bin-13.5.tar.gz) = 005791d8483570f2a093b7e202876d95 MD5 (cvsup-13.5.tar.gz) = 82c6dc9290fb1ce055a6027670af57f6 An updated port will appear in the FreeBSD ports and packages collections soon: ftp://ftp.freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD/ports-current/net/cvsup/ ftp://ftp.freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD/packages-current/net/cvsup-13.5.tgz The FreeBSD package now depends only on the "modula-3-lib" package, a subset of the Modula-3 installation consisting of only the shared libraries. Because of this, you can now install and use the "cvsup" package in a reasonable amount of disk space. The package is much smaller than the statically linked binary distribution, so updates to new versions of CVSup should be more convenient now. The package is the recommended distribution for binary-only users. The static binary distributions will probably be phased out soon. If you want SOCKS support, you must also install the "modula-3-socks" port or package: ftp://ftp.freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD/ports-current/lang/modula-3-socks/ SOCKS is supported only under FreeBSD, and only with dynamically linked executables. The static binary distributions do not support SOCKS. ** If you wish to build CVSup from the sources, be sure to read the discussion further on in this announcement. What Has Changed Since the Previous Release? - -------------------------------------------- Support SOCKS, using a new add-on library in ports/lang/modula-3-socks. Add command line options "-z" and "-Z" for directly controlling the "compress" option, overriding what is in the supfile. Likewise, add "-d" and "-D" for overriding the "delete" option. Make the client retry automatically when transient failures occur. This is done only in batch (non-GUI) mode. Retries use randomized exponential backoff. The retry delay starts out at about 5 minutes, and increases to a maximum of about 2 hours. Programs are now built fully dynamically linked by default. If "-DSTATIC" is in the "M3FLAGS" environment variable, then they are linked fully static. If "-DM3STATIC" is present, then the Modula-3 libraries are linked statically, and the system libraries are linked dynamically. (This used to be the default.) It is now possible to build the client without the GUI, by adding "-DNOGUI" to the "M3FLAGS" environment variable. What Is CVSup? - -------------- CVSup is a software package for distributing and updating collections of files across a network. CVSup is specifically tailored to distributing CVS repositories. By taking advantage of the special properties of the files contained in CVS repositories, CVSup is able to perform updates much faster than traditional systems. It is especially valuable for people with slow Internet connections. CVSup parses and understands the RCS files making up a CVS repository. When updates occur, CVSup extracts new deltas directly from the RCS files on the server and edits them into the client's RCS files. Likewise, CVSup notes the addition of new symbolic tags to the files on the server and sends only the new tags to the client. CVSup is able to merge new deltas and tags from the server with deltas and tags added locally on the client machine. This makes it possible for the client to check local modifications into his repository without their being obliterated by subsequent updates from the server. Note: Although this feature is fully implemented in CVSup, it will probably not be practical to use it until some small changes have been made to CVS. In addition to distributing the RCS files themselves, CVSup is able to distribute specific checked-out versions. The client can specify a symbolic tag, a date, or both and CVSup will extract the appropriate versions from the server's CVS repository. Checked-out versions do not need to be stored on the server since CVSup can extract any version directly from the CVS repository. If the client has an existing checked-out tree, CVSup will apply the appropriate edits to update the tree or transform it into the requested version. Only the differences between the existing version and the desired version are sent across the network. CVSup uses lightweight processes (threads) to implement a streaming protocol across the network. This completely eliminates the delays associated with the lock-step, request-reply form of communication used by many existing protocols, such as sup and NNTP. Information is transferred at the full available speed of the network in both directions at once. Network latency and server response delays are rendered practically irrelevant. CVSup uses the "zlib" compression package to optionally compress all communications. This provides an additional 65-75% compression, on top of the diff-based compression already built into CVSup. For efficiency, all processing is built into the CVSup package itself. Neither the client nor the server executes any other programs. For further information about how CVSup works, see the "Blurb" document in the CVSup distribution. Using CVSup to Maintain FreeBSD Sources - --------------------------------------- CVSup servers are currently running at the following FreeBSD mirror sites: USA: cvsup.freebsd.org cvsup2.freebsd.org The Netherlands: cvsup.nl.freebsd.org Using CVSup, you can easily receive or update any of the standard FreeBSD source releases, namely, "cvs", "current", and "stable". The manual page for cvsup(1) describes how to do that. If all goes well, additional servers will come on-line soon. Building CVSup from the Sources - ------------------------------- CVSup is written in Modula-3, a modern, compiled, object-oriented language. Modula-3 integrates threads, exceptions, and garbage collection, providing an ideal vehicle for this sort of application. Without Modula-3, CVSup would almost certainly not exist today. If you wish to build CVSup from the sources, you will first need to install the free Modula-3 compiler and runtime libraries from DEC SRC. A port is available in the FreeBSD ports collection, in "lang/modula-3". The corresponding package is, of course, available in the packages collection. You will also need version 1.0.4 or later of the "zlib" library. In recent versions of FreeBSD-2.2-current, this library has been incorporated into the system sources, in "src/lib/libz". Prior to that, a FreeBSD port was available in "devel/libz" of the FreeBSD ports collection. For other sources of this library, see the "Install" file. Do not try to use versions earlier than 1.0.4. You will also need Poul-Henning Kamp's "libmd" library. It is a standard library on FreeBSD systems. Portability Issues - ------------------ I intend for CVSup to be portable to most POSIX systems. The present release has only been tested under FreeBSD versions 2.1 and later. Primarily because of packaging problems, this release of CVSup probably won't build out-of-the-box on other systems. Among other things, it relies on Poul-Henning Kamp's "libmd" encapsulation of the MD5 subroutines. The library itself appears to be quite portable, but its Makefiles are BSD-specific. There are probably some other FreeBSD-specific things in CVSup that have not been found yet. Anybody who succeeds in porting CVSup to other systems is encouraged to send his changes to . As long as the changes are reasonably palatable, they will be incorporated into future CVSup releases. CVSup uses several POSIX-specific functions which may make it more of an effort to port the package to non-POSIX systems such as Win32. These functions include mmap, fork, syslog, stat, and chmod, among others. Status of this Release - ---------------------- CVSup has seen heavy use and has been quite stable for months. Like all software, though, it is not perfect. Please be prepared to find bugs -- without a doubt, there are some. Please report bugs to . John Polstra, Copyright 1996 John D. Polstra From owner-freebsd-announce Fri Nov 1 15:59:11 1996 Return-Path: owner-freebsd-announce Received: (from root@localhost) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.7.5/8.7.3) id PAA09211 for freebsd-announce-outgoing; Fri, 1 Nov 1996 15:59:11 -0800 (PST) Received: from freefall.freebsd.org (localhost.cdrom.com [127.0.0.1]) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.7.5/8.7.3) with ESMTP id PAA09198 for ; Fri, 1 Nov 1996 15:59:07 -0800 (PST) To: announce@freebsd.org Subject: FreeBSD 2.2 branch created. Reply-to: phk@freebsd.org MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-ID: <9189.846892743.1@freefall.freebsd.org> Date: Fri, 01 Nov 1996 15:59:06 -0800 Message-ID: <9194.846892746@freefall.freebsd.org> From: Poul-Henning Kamp Sender: owner-freebsd-announce@freebsd.org X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Precedence: bulk The highly honoured CVS wizard Mr Peter Wemm has dutifully swung his "staff of various CVS tricks" and created the "RELENG_2_2" branch. This will ultimately lead to the release of "FreeBSD 2.2" in December or January. Release engineering will be the joint task of Jordan and Poul-Henning. FreeBSD 2.2 is basically what is in -current today, plus fixes for those significant problems we may find between now and the release. I expect the ALPHA snapshot will be released in about 10 days, and >if< it is deemed necessary, a BETA snapshot may be produced, this will be decided in due time. If you can find the time to test a snapshot for us, by all means please do so, and don't be shy to report all problems you notice on the way. A couple of new features are being considered for inclusion in 2.2 which are not in -current at this time, these will be committed to -current (ie: the HEAD branch) by the respective parties for testing so we can decide in their suitability for inclusion in the 2.2 release. I would like to stress the following: It has not, and will not, at this time be decided if there will ever be another release on this branch (ie: 2.2.5 or similar) This will be decided no earlier than spring '97 some time, and pestering anybody about it now in the mailing lists is at best counter-productive, at worst will have the opposite effect. If you decide that you would like to see a 2.2.5 release down the road, the operative word is "contribution". A 2.1.6 release is also under consideration right now, a separate announcement will be issued when a decision has been made. -- Poul-Henning Kamp The FreeBSD Core team