A little bit of help understanding CVS and cvsup

[John Nielsen]

On Thursday 17 May 2007 11:04:06 am Andrew Falanga wrote:
> Hi,
>
> This question probably hasn't much to do with CVS directly but using
> cvsup.  I want/need to update a 6.0-RELEASE system.  However, this
> system has some critical data on it and I'd rather not move to code
> that is perhaps experimental or "bleeding-edge" technology.  I see in
> /usr/share/examples/cvsup several supfiles named various things.  I
> see from the handbook that standard-supfile applies to, what seems
> like, the bleeding-edge and the stable-supfile is what I'm looking for
> .. yes?
>
> How do I ensure I update the sources to the most current, STABLE, branch?

The main difference between the examples files is the cvs tag used.

The "." tag will get you 7.0-CURRENT. Very much bleeding edge, almost 
certainly not what you want.

The "RELENG_6" tag will get you 6-STABLE. This is the branch that will 
eventually become 6.3-RELEASE. Everything in this branch is reasonably 
conservative and well-tested, but there is still some new code and features. 
This might be what you want.

The "RELENG_6_2" tag will get you 6.2-RELEASE-pX, where X is the current patch 
revision level. This is 6.2-RELEASE with security and critical patches only, 
no new features. This is probably what you want, unless there's a feature 
in -STABLE that you can't live without.

JN