Spiral Rebuild

Updating the ports tree with CVSup

One of the first things to be done upon installation of a FreeBSD system, is to update the ports tree, which contains information on the many programs which are available [and maintained] on FreeBSD.

To get started here's a good read:

FreeBSD Handbook
4.5 Using the Ports Collection
http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/ports-using.html

In my case, I ran the following command to install the CVSup program:
pkg_add -r cvsup
(I installed XWindows/XOrg, so I did not use the “cvsup-without-gui”)
I copied /usr/share/examples/cvsup/ports-supfile to ~root/, which contains the information CVSup needs to update the ports tree.
Then I edited the above file to reference the CVSup mirror closest to me [Canada]: cvsup1.ca.FreeBSD.org

Instead of having to remember to do “cvsup ports-supfile”, I made a very simple script: ~root/scripts/ports_update

#!/bin/sh
cvsup ~root/ports-supfile

Yes, I put ports-supfile where the FreeBSD Handbook suggested.

Now that my ports tree references all the latest software and versions, I need to get portupgrade working. Then I can move onto reinstalling software, such as Samba, KDE, etc.