From owner-freebsd-announce Thu Jul 10 23:34:36 1997 Return-Path: Received: (from root@localhost) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.5/8.8.5) id XAA20534 for freebsd-announce-outgoing; Thu, 10 Jul 1997 23:34:36 -0700 (PDT) Received: from austin.polstra.com (austin.polstra.com [206.213.73.10]) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id XAA20527 for ; Thu, 10 Jul 1997 23:34:31 -0700 (PDT) Received: from austin.polstra.com (jdp@localhost) by austin.polstra.com (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id XAA27265 for ; Thu, 10 Jul 1997 23:34:29 -0700 (PDT) Message-Id: <199707110634.XAA27265@austin.polstra.com> To: freebsd-announce@freebsd.org Subject: CVSup 15.1 is now available Date: Thu, 10 Jul 1997 23:34:28 -0700 From: John Polstra Sender: owner-freebsd-announce@freebsd.org X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Precedence: bulk Announcing CVSup 15.1 --------------------- Release 15.1 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://hub.FreeBSD.org/pub/CVSup/ (California) ftp://ftp.cs.tu-berlin.de/pub/FreeBSD/CVSup/ (Germany) ftp://ftp.polstra.com/pub/FreeBSD/CVSup/ (slow; avoid if possible) Full sources as well as FreeBSD binaries are available: cvsup-bin-15.1.tar.gz FreeBSD static binaries for the client + GUI cvsup.nogui-bin-15.1.tar.gz FreeBSD static binaries for the client (no GUI) cvsupd-bin-15.1.tar.gz FreeBSD static binaries for the server cvsup-15.1.tar.gz Sources ** MD5 signatures for these files are: MD5 (cvsup-bin-15.1.tar.gz) = 031621cb49d9e9ff2e69d1fb2d9bdc16 MD5 (cvsup.nogui-bin-15.1.tar.gz) = 245878cb3b15b8f4e223f994b3178722 MD5 (cvsupd-bin-15.1.tar.gz) = 87b5d200de5fee146575d3c233f4f433 MD5 (cvsup-15.1.tar.gz) = cdb2b1d3c117b31a8923606fb41f99cf An updated port will appear in the FreeBSD ports and packages collections soon: Port: ftp://ftp.FreeBSD.org/pub/FreeBSD/ports-current/net/cvsup/ Package: ftp://ftp.FreeBSD.org/pub/FreeBSD/packages-current/net/cvsup-15.1.tgz ftp://ftp.FreeBSD.org/pub/FreeBSD/packages-2.2/net/cvsup-15.1.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 may be phased out soon. If you want SOCKS support, you must also install the "modula-3-socks" port or package: Port: ftp://ftp.FreeBSD.org/pub/FreeBSD/ports-current/lang/modula-3-socks/ Package: ftp://ftp.FreeBSD.org/pub/FreeBSD/packages-current/lang/modula-3-socks-1.0.tgz ftp://ftp.FreeBSD.org/pub/FreeBSD/packages-2.2/lang/modula-3-socks-1.0.tgz 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. Compatibility with Previous Releases ------------------------------------ This release is backward-compatible with release 14.0, except for a couple of minor differences in the client: * On the client, symbolic links are no longer followed inside a collection. (If the prefix is a symbolic link, it is followed _to_ the collection.) This might affect some users who mirror the FreeBSD "gnats" collection. This collection typically uses a prefix of "home", and all updated files are in the subtree "gnats". It is important that "gnats" be a true subdirectory of the prefix, and not a symbolic link to a directory. In other words, adjust your prefix if necessary, so that it designates the true parent directory of your "gnats" tree. (In actuality, the client is more tolerant than this discussion implies. It recognizes the problematic situations and does the right thing, emitting only a warning.) * The default verbosity level when the GUI is not used has been changed from "-L 0" to "-L 1". * The old "-d" and "-D" command line options no longer exist. I doubt that anybody used them anyway. * There is a new "-d delLimit" option with which you can specify a limit on the number of files the client will delete before it decides something is seriously wrong and quits. [Note that the reuse of "-d" shouldn't cause undetected problems, because the old version accepted no arguments while the new version requires a numeric argument.] There are a couple of very minor compatibility issues which could affect a few users upgrading from a release prior to 14.0. Clients: The default for the "base" directory has changed from "/usr" to "/usr/local/etc/cvsup". Practically everybody specifies the base explicitly in their supfiles, so this change will have no impact for most people. If you have been using the default value, you will need to add a line "*default base=/home" to your supfile, or specify "-b /home" on the cvsup command line. Servers: The "hostbase" is no longer taken from the client's supfile. It is now controlled on the server host. On the FreeBSD project, "hostbase=/home" was always used in the past. People operating servers will need to specify "-b /home" on the cvsupd command line to get the same effect. Alternatively, move your server configuration files from "/home" to the new default location, "/usr/local/etc/cvsup". (As before, most of the configuration files appear under a subdirectory named "sup".) What Has Changed Since the Previous Release? -------------------------------------------- Notable changes in release 15.1: Implemented a new "multiplexed" mode of operation which should eliminate all of the obstacles to using CVSup behind a firewall. In multiplexed mode, only a single TCP connection from the client to the server is used. A built-in packet layer multiplexes the four data streams over the single connection. This mode is enabled by specifying "-P m" on the cvsup command line. It works with or without SOCKS. Fixed a potential security problem: In certain circumstances it was possible for the client to create a setuid file with the wrong owner. Made the client and server deal better with files such as log files which often grow on the server while they are being transferred. The fix is duplicated in both the client and server, so that a current version of either is sufficient to get the improved behavior. Made the client and the server log the software version of the other, if it is known. Of course, it is only known if it is this version or later. Fixed a GUI bug: The "other" statistics weren't reset properly when starting a new update. In checkout mode, made the system deal better with broken CVS repositories that have file deaths recorded on the vendor branch. Fixed a bug in the handling of the client's "-i pattern" options and the equivalent "filter" type-in when in checkout mode. Specifying a directory did not cause an update of all files under it when in checkout mode; it was necessary to specify a pattern like "dir/*". Added a new server option "-e" to suppress the usual redirection of the standard output and standard error to "/dev/null". This really helps to diagnose crashes when they happen. Please use it! 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. To update non-RCS files, CVSup uses the highly efficient rsync algorithm, developed by Andrew Tridgell and Paul Mackerras. 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 Argentina: cvsup.ar.FreeBSD.org Australia: cvsup.au.FreeBSD.org Brazil: cvsup.br.FreeBSD.org Germany: cvsup.de.FreeBSD.org Japan: cvsup.jp.FreeBSD.org Netherlands: cvsup.nl.FreeBSD.org Norway: cvsup.no.FreeBSD.org South Africa: cvsup.za.FreeBSD.org Taiwan: sup.tw.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. For more detailed instructions, see the section on CVSup in the FreeBSD Handbook: http://www.FreeBSD.org/handbook/cvsup.html 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 FreeBSD-2.1.6 and later releases, 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. Portability Issues ------------------ I intend for CVSup to be portable to most POSIX systems. The previous release has been run on a number of different platforms, including FreeBSD, Linux, and DEC OSF/1 ALPHA. The current release has only been tested under FreeBSD versions 2.1 and later; however, I attempted not to introduce any new portability problems. 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 1996-1997 John D. Polstra $Id: Announce,v 1.27 1997/07/11 04:33:15 jdp Exp $ This is the moderated mailing list freebsd-announce. The list contains announcements of new FreeBSD capabilities, important events and project milestones. See also the FreeBSD Web pages at http://www.freebsd.org