head's /usr/src/UPDATING vs. "LOADER_DEFAULT_INTERP, documented in build(7)": not documented yet

[Mark Millard]

On 2018-Aug-26, at 12:35 PM, Dag-Erling Smørgrav <des at des.no> wrote:

> Mark Millard <marklmi at yahoo.com> writes:
>> But when I look at [...] the installed build(7) for head -r338319 I do
>> not find any references to LOADER_DEFAULT_INTERP .
> 
> It was added to build(7) in r338043:

Thanks for the notes.

Sure enough I see it in /usr/src/share/man/man7/build.7 . Not sure
how I missed it in the man output. I thought that I also searched for
it via the command line.

It looks like:

https://www.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?query=build&apropos=0&sektion=7&manpath=FreeBSD+12-current&arch=default&format=html

lags (2017-Dec-24) so I should not depend on such having recent updates.
(Good to know.)


>     LOADER_DEFAULT_INTERP  Defines what interpreter the default loader
>                            program will have.  Valid values include “4th”,
>                            “lua”, and “simp”.  This creates the default link
>                            for /boot/loader to the loader with that
>                            interpreter.  It also determines what interpreter
>                            is compiled into userboot.
> 
>> I have assumed that my long-in-use amd64 virtual-box context that I
>> run and update FreeBSD in (under macOS) just automatically updated
>> sufficiently via installkernel and installworld after building.
> 
> Correct.  The loader and its support files (4th and lua) are built by
> 'make buildworld' and installed by 'make installworld'.  The source code
> is in /usr/src/stand.

[Looks like userboot is /boot/userboot.so and is associated with bhyvload.]

>> (This assumes that all the changes are in the freebsd-ufs partition
>> involved and that the freebsd-boot partition involved need not be
>> updated.)
> 
> The freebsd-boot partition contains the code that loads the loader and
> should not need updating.

Thanks again.

===
Mark Millard
marklmi at yahoo.com
( dsl-only.net went
away in early 2018-Mar)