cvsup newbie questions

[Joshua Lokken]

On Fri, 17 Dec 2004 13:11:18 -0800, Kevin Smith <smithcam at adelphia.net> wrote:
> I'm interested in upgrading to gnome 2.8 (and possibly the newer
> releases of other applications)...I'm running the following version of
> freebsd:
> 
> 5.3-RELEASE FreeBSD 5.3-RELEASE #0: Fri Nov  5 04:19:18 UTC 2004
> root at harlow.cse.buffalo.edu:/usr/obj/usr/src/sys/GENERIC  i386
> 
> In starting to learn cvsup, I'm trying to figure out what I need.
> 
> The "src-all" collection seems like it is more than I want to update.
> Freebsd seems to  be working fine on my system and I don't think that I
> want to upgrade any kernel or OS-related programs unless any
> applications that I would want depend on it.
> 
> So, if I am just interested in the latest fixes/version for applications
> running on 5.3-Release, should I just upgrade the ports collection ?
> There is an example supfile in /usr/share/examples/cvsup/ports-supfile.
> Would this be the best configuration to use ?
> 
> Also, when I do upgrade the ports tree, I'm assuming it will just
> upgrade the skeleton tree, correct ?  Even if I do upgrade "src-all",
> its not going to down load the .tar files for all the source code ?

The src tree, which gets updated if you cvsup src-all is the source
code to rebuild the operating system.  The ports tree is, you're
correct, the skeletons for building third party software, which 
includes gnome.  If you want to install the latest version of gnome,
you should cvsup the ports tree (ports-all), then cd into the directory
for the gnome meta-port (it builds gnome and alot of associated apps)
and build it, like so:

# cd /usr/ports/x11/gnome2
# make install clean

Go away on a vacation for the holidays, and when you get back,
you _should_ have gnome built and installed, along with alot of
goodies.

As you're running 5.3-RELEASE, I don't believe most applications
will require a system update, however, if you want to track 
security and critical patches to the OS, then you will want to
cvsup the src tree (src-all) and use the RELENG_5_3 tag in your
src-supfile.  You should read:

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

HTH,

-- 
Joshua Lokken
Open Source Advocate