HEADS UP: FreeBSD src repo transitioning to git this weekend

[Christos Chatzaras]

> On 31 Dec 2020, at 09:50, Helge Oldach <freebsd at oldach.net> wrote:
> 
> Mergemaster is looking for "[$]${ID_TAG}:" (note the colon) which will
> break with the git "$FreeBSD$" scheme. This makes autoupdate annoyingly
> explicit as local changes to /etc files will no longer be recognized as
> "accepted".
> 
> Furthermore, will the replay from git to svn (for stable branches)
> retain the existing "$FreeBSD: ..." tags? I guess not...
> 
> The only sensible way out is to retire mergemaster and switch to
> etcupdate. This would affect any stable/1? users building from source.
> 
> IMHO this is suprising behaviour and deserves a note in UPDATING.
> 
> Kind regards
> Helge


If I understood it correctly when we upgrade to a new patch level in the same releng (for example 12.2p1 to 12.2p2) the mergmaster will ask us again to merge/install/ignore every file we made changes in /etc . With SVN this happened only once when we upgrade from different releng (for example 12.1 to 12.2) and upgrading to a new patch level need less work for the system administrator.

First time I hear about etcupdate.

Until now I use these commands to upgrade:

cd /usr/src
make buildworld
make buildkernel

make installkernel
mergemaster -p
make installworld
mergemaster -UiF

So now the commands will be like this?

cd /usr/src
make buildworld
make buildkernel

make installkernel
make installworld
etcupdate

Or we have to run etcupdate before installworld to save our local changes?