Packages available for different FreeBSD versions

[Andrew Gould]

On Mon, Aug 17, 2009 at 3:27 PM, Chris Stankevitz<cstankevitz at toyon.com> wrote:
>
> Hello,
>
> Hello, I have two questions:
>
> 1. Is it true that I have the choice to run these versions of FreeBSD:
>
> 8.0 CURRENT
> 7.2 RELEASE
> 7.2 STABLE
> 7.2 CURRENT
> 7.1 RELEASE
> 7.1 STABLE
> 7.1 CURRENT
> 7.0 RELEASE
> 7.0 STABLE
> 7.0 CURRENT
> 6.4 RELEASE
> 6.4 STABLE
> 6.4 CURRENT

You can find links to directories with ISO images of various RELEASES here:
ftp://ftp.freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD/

Some older releases have been moved to archives.

Once you're installed a RELEASE, you can update it to STABLE by
updating the operating system.  More information about updating can be
found in the online handbook:
http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/

more specifically here:
http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/updating-upgrading.html

>
> 2. For each of the versions above, what version of GCC and VirtualBox is
> available?  I don't intend for this questions to directly be answered -- I'm
> hoping for a site that lists the versions of all packages available for a
> particular version of FreeBSD like this page for gentoo:
> http://packages.gentoo.org/package/www-client/mozilla-firefox

The ports system, and the versions of applications available, changes
with time and is not directly associated with the core operating
system version number.  Once you've installed the operating system,
you could choose to keep the operating system the same, but continue
to update the ports system.

You can find application binaries that were built at the time the OS
version was released here:

ftp://ftp.freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD/ports/

They are arranged by computer architecture and release number.  There
are also stable directories for certain releases.

More information about various RELEASES and their features can be found here:
http://www.freebsd.org/releases/

>
> Thank you,
>
> Chris

Best of luck,

Andrew