FreeBSD Manual Pages
RELEASE(7) Miscellaneous Information Manual RELEASE(7) NAME release -- release building infrastructure DESCRIPTION FreeBSD provides a complete build environment suitable for users to make full releases of the FreeBSD operating system. All of the tools necessary to build a release are available from the FreeBSD source code repository in src/release. A complete release can be built with only a single command, including the creation of ISO images suitable for burning to CD-ROM, memory stick images, and a network install directory. This command is aptly named "make release". For some users, it may be desirable to provide an absolutely clean build environment, with no local modifications to the source tree or to make.conf(5), and with clean checkouts of specific versions of the doc, src, and ports trees. For this purpose, a script (src/release/release.sh) is provided to automate these checkouts and then execute "make release" in a clean chroot(8). Before attempting to build a release, the user is expected to be familiar with the contents of build(7), and should have experience upgrading systems from source. The release build process requires that /usr/obj be populated with the out- put of "make buildworld" and "make buildkernel". This is necessary to pro- vide the object files for the release or, when using release.sh, so that the object files for a complete system can be installed into a clean ch- root(8) environment. If the target release build is for a different architecture or machine type, the TARGET and TARGET_ARCH variables must be used. See the supported release.conf variables for more information. The release procedure on some architectures may also require that the md(4) (memory disk) device driver be present in the kernel (either by being compiled in or available as a module). This document does not cover source code management, quality assurance, or other aspects of the release engineering process. CLEAN RELEASE GENERATION Official releases of FreeBSD are produced in a clean environment to ensure consistency between the versions of the src, ports, and doc trees and to avoid contamination from the host system (such as local patches, changes to make.conf(5), etc.). This is accomplished using the wrapper script src/release/release.sh. release.sh [-c release.conf] release.sh checks out the src/, ports/, and doc/ trees to CHROOTDIR, then calls "make buildworld" and "make installworld" to generate a chroot(8) en- vironment. Next, "make release" is run within the chroot(8) environment and places the result in $CHROOTDIR/R. The optional release.conf configuration file supports the following vari- ables: CHROOTDIR The directory within which the release will be built. De- faults to /scratch. CHROOT_MAKEENV Additional make(1) arguments to pass through, which di- rectly affect the tuning of the build chroot. NOGIT Do not explicitly require the git(1) port to be installed. GITROOT The git(1) host used to check out the various trees. De- faults to https://git.FreeBSD.org. SRCBRANCH The src/ branch to use. Defaults to -b main. PORTBRANCH The ports/ branch to use. Defaults to head/@rHEAD. TARGET The target machine type for cross-building a release. TARGET_ARCH The target machine architecture for cross-building a re- lease. For the supported list of TARGET and TARGET_ARCH combina- tions, consult the output of "make targets" as documented in build(7). KERNEL The target kernel configuration to use. Defaults to GENERIC. Multiple KERNEL entries may be specified. MAKE_CONF The make.conf(5) to use for the release build. Defaults to /dev/null to prevent polluting the release with local system changes. SRC_CONF The src.conf(5) to use for the release build. Defaults to /dev/null to prevent polluting the release with local sys- tem changes. MAKE_FLAGS Additional flags to pass to make(1). WORLD_FLAGS Additional flags to pass to make(1) during the "buildworld" phase. Defaults to setting the number of make(1) jobs (-j) to the number of CPUs available on a SMP-capable system. KERNEL_FLAGS Additional flags to pass to make(1) during the "buildkernel" phase. Defaults to setting the number of make(1) jobs (-j) to half the number of CPUs available on a SMP-capable system. NOPORTS Set to a non-empty value to skip the ports/ tree checkout. When set, NOPORTS will prevent the ports.txz distribution package from being created. WITH_DVD Set to a non-empty value to include the dvdrom target. WITH_COMPRESSED_IMAGES Set to a non-empty value to compress the release images with xz(1). The original (uncompressed) images are not removed. XZ_THREADS (int) Set to the number of threads xz(1) should use when com- pressing images. By default, XZ_THREADS is set to 0, which uses all available cores on the system. VCSCMD The command run to obtain the source trees. Defaults to "git clone -q". CHROOTBUILD_SKIP If defined, the buildworld, installworld, and distribution stages of the chroot(8) build environment setup are skipped. This is intended solely for cases where the ch- root(8) userland are provided by alternate means. SRC_UPDATE_SKIP Set to a non-empty value to prevent checkout or update of /usr/src within the chroot(8). This is intended for use only when /usr/src is expected to exist by alternative means. PORTS_UPDATE_SKIP Set to a non-empty value to prevent checkout or update of /usr/ports within the chroot(8). This is intended for use only when /usr/ports is expected to exist by alternative means. PKGBASE Include base system packages for use with pkg(8) on the install media, instead of legacy tarball distribution sets. PKG_CMD A path to the pkg(8) executable to use when installing packages in release images as a non-root user. PKG_REPOS_DIR An optional path to a directory containing pkg(8) reposi- tory configuration files. These configuration files will be used when installing packages in release images as a non-root user. PKG_REPO_NAME The name of the repository configuration to use when in- stalling packages in release images as a non-root user. EMBEDDED BUILDS The following release.conf variables are relevant only to release builds for embedded systems: EMBEDDEDBUILD Set to a non-null value to enable functionality for embed- ded device release builds. When set, WITH_DVD is unset. Additionally, EMBEDDED_TARGET and EMBEDDED_TARGET_ARCH must also be de- fined. When the build environment is created, release.sh runs a separate build script located in an architecture- specific directory in src/release/${EMBEDDED_TARGET}/. EMBEDDEDPORTS Set to the list of any ports that are required for the target device in the format of category/port. EMBEDDED_TARGET When set, its value is passed to make(1) to set the TARGET (value of uname -m) to cross build the target userland. EMBEDDED_TARGET_ARCH When set, its value is passed to make(1) to set the TARGET_ARCH (value of uname -p) to cross build the target userland. VIRTUAL MACHINE DISK IMAGES The following release.conf variables are relevant only to virtual machine disk image builds: WITH_VMIMAGES Set to a non-null value to build virtual machine disk im- ages as part of the release build. WITH_VMIMAGES may also be specified as an environment variable passed to make(1). WITH_COMPRESSED_VMIMAGES Set to a non-null value to compress the virtual machine disk images with xz(1) as part of the install make(1) tar- get. Note that compressing virtual machine disk images may take a very long time on some systems. VMBASE Set to change the name of the resulting virtual machine disk image file. The default value is vm. VMSIZE Set to change the size of the virtual machine disk capac- ity. The default value is 20g. See makefs(8) for valid values. Virtual machine disk images are, by default, created as sparse images. When WITH_COMPRESSED_VMIMAGES is used, the resulting files compressed with xz(1) compress to roughly the same size, regardless of the specified disk image size. VMFS (Deprecated.) Set to specify which of the filesystem(s) listed in VMFSLIST is linked to the historical non- filesystem-labelled file name. Valid values are ufs and zfs. The default value is ufs. VMFSLIST Set to specify the list of file system types to build im- ages for. Valid values are one or both of ufs and zfs. The default value is ufs zfs. VMFORMATS Set to the target virtual disk image format(s) to create. By default, the vhdf, vmdk, qcow2, and raw formats are created. See mkimg(1) for valid format values. For a list of supported VMFORMATS values (including cloud hosting provider formats) along with a brief description, run: cd /usr/src make -C release list-vmtargets CLOUD HOSTING MACHINE IMAGES The FreeBSD release build tools support building virtual machine images for various cloud hosting providers, each with their own specific configuration to include support for each hosting provider by default. The following make(1) environment variables are supported: CLOUDWARE Set to a list of one or more cloud hosting providers, en- closed in quotes. Requires WITH_CLOUDWARE to also be set. WITH_CLOUDWARE Set to a non-empty value to enable building virtual ma- chine images for various cloud hosting providers. Re- quires CLOUDWARE to also be set. Additionally, the CLOUDWARE and WITH_CLOUDWARE variables can be added to release.conf, and used in conjunction with release.sh. For a list of supported CLOUDWARE values, run: cd /usr/src make -C release list-cloudware OCI IMAGES The FreeBSD release build tools have experimental support for building Open Container Initiative (OCI) format container base images. This is enabled using a release.conf variable: WITH_OCIIMAGES Set to a non-null value to build OCI base images. MAKEFILE TARGETS The release makefile (src/release/Makefile) is fairly abstruse. Most de- velopers will only be concerned with the release and install targets. release Meta-target to build all release media and distributions ap- plicable to this platform. install Copy all produced release media to ${DESTDIR}. cdrom Builds installation CD-ROM images. This may require the md(4) (memory disk) device driver be present in the kernel (either by being compiled in or available as a module). This target produces files called disc1.iso and bootonly.iso as its output. dvdrom Builds installation DVD-ROM images. This may require the md(4) (memory disk) device driver be present in the kernel (either by being compiled in or available as a module). This target produces the dvd1.iso file as its output. memstick Builds an installation memory stick image named memstick.img. Not applicable on all platforms. Requires that the md(4) (memory disk) device driver be present in the kernel (either by being compiled in or available as a module). mini-memstick Similar to memstick, with the exception that the installa- tion distribution sets are not included. ftp Creates a directory named ftp containing the distribution files used in network installations and suitable for upload to an FTP mirror. vm-image Creates virtual machine disk images in various formats. The vm-image target requires the WITH_VMIMAGES make(1) environ- ment variable to be set to a non-null value. vm-cloudware Builds FreeBSD virtual machine images for various cloud hosting providers. See "CLOUD HOSTING MACHINE IMAGES" for implementation details. list-cloudware Displays the list of valid CLOUDWARE values. list-vmtargets Displays the list of valid VMFORMATS and CLOUDWARE values. Major subtargets called by targets above: packagesystem Generates all the distribution archives (base, kernel, ports, doc) applicable on this platform. disc1 Builds a bootable installation system containing all the distribution files packaged by the packagesystem target, and suitable for imaging by the cdrom, dvdrom and memstick tar- gets. reldoc Builds the release documentation. This includes the release notes, hardware guide, and installation instructions. Other documentation, such as the Handbook, is built during the base.txz target invoked by packagesystem. ENVIRONMENT Optional variables: OSRELEASE Optional base name for generated media images when invoking the install target (e.g., FreeBSD-12.1-RELEASE-amd64). De- faults to the output of `uname -s`-`uname -r`-`uname -p` within the chroot. WORLDDIR Location of a directory containing the src tree. By default, the directory above the one containing the makefile (src). PORTSDIR Location of a directory containing the ports tree. By de- fault, /usr/ports. If it is unset or cannot be found, ports will not be included in the release. NOPORTS If defined, the Ports Collection will be omitted from the re- lease. NOSRC If set, do not include system source code in the release. TARGET The target hardware platform. This is analogous to the "uname -m" output. This is necessary to cross-build some target ar- chitectures. For example, cross-building for ARM64 machines requires TARGET_ARCH=aarch64 and TARGET=arm64. If not set, TARGET defaults to the current hardware platform. TARGET_ARCH The target machine processor architecture. This is analogous to the "uname -p" output. Set this to cross-build for a dif- ferent architecture. If not set, TARGET_ARCH defaults to the current machine architecture, unless TARGET is also set, in which case it defaults to the appropriate value for that plat- form. Typically, one only needs to set TARGET. FILES /scratch /usr/doc/Makefile /usr/doc/share/mk/doc.project.mk /usr/ports/Mk/bsd.port.mk /usr/ports/Mk/bsd.sites.mk /usr/share/examples/etc/make.conf /usr/src/Makefile /usr/src/Makefile.inc1 /usr/src/release/Makefile /usr/src/release/Makefile.vm /usr/src/release/release.sh /usr/src/release/release.conf.sample /usr/src/release/tools/*.conf /usr/src/release/tools/vmimage.subr EXAMPLES The following sequence of commands can be used to build a "-CURRENT snap- shot": cd /usr git clone -b main https://git.freebsd.org/src.git src cd src make buildworld buildkernel cd release make obj make release make install DESTDIR=/var/freebsd-snapshot After running these commands, all produced distribution files (tarballs for FTP, CD-ROM images, etc.) are available in the /var/freebsd-snapshot direc- tory. The following sequence of commands can be used to build a "-CURRENT snap- shot" in a clean environment, including ports and documentation: cd /usr/src/release sh release.sh Optionally, a configuration file can be used to customize the release build: cd /usr/src/release sh release.sh -c $HOME/release.conf Configuration files specific to various supported embedded systems, such as the Raspberry Pi, exist in the directory corresponding to the TARGET make(1) variable. For example, to build an image for 64-bit Raspberry Pis: cd /usr/src/release sh release.sh -c arm64/RPI.conf After running these commands, all prepared release files are available in the /scratch directory. The target directory can be changed by specifying the CHROOTDIR variable in release.conf. COMPATIBILITY The reldoc target was removed in commit f61e92ca5a23, and DOCDIR, DOCBRANCH, DOC_UPDATE_SKIP, and NODOC are therefore no longer supported. SEE ALSO cc(1), git(1)(ports/devel/git), install(1), make(1), mkimg(1), uname(1), md(4), make.conf(5), build(7), ports(7), chroot(8), mtree(8), sysctl(8) FreeBSD Release Engineering, https://docs.freebsd.org/en/articles/freebsd- releng/. FreeBSD Developers' Handbook, https://docs.freebsd.org/en/books/developers- handbook/. HISTORY FreeBSD 1.x used a manual checklist, compiled by Rod Grimes, to produce a release. Apart from being incomplete, the list put a lot of specific de- mands on available file systems and was quite torturous to execute. As part of the FreeBSD 2.0 release engineering effort, significant effort was spent getting src/release/Makefile into a shape where it could at least automate most of the tediousness of building a release in a sterile envi- ronment. For the FreeBSD 9.0 release, src/release/Makefile was overhauled and the wrapper script src/release/generate-release.sh introduced to support the introduction of a new installer. For the FreeBSD 9.2 release, src/release/release.sh was introduced to sup- port per-build configuration files. src/release/release.sh is heavily based on the src/release/generate-release.sh script. At near 1000 revisions spread over multiple branches, the git(1) log of src/release/Makefile contains a vivid historical record of some of the hardships release engineers go through. AUTHORS src/release/Makefile was originally written by Rod Grimes, Jordan Hubbard, and Poul-Henning Kamp. This manual page was originally written by Murray Stokely <mur- ray@FreeBSD.org>. It was updated by Nathan Whitehorn <nwhitehorn@FreeBSD.org> to include the generate-release.sh script used for the FreeBSD 9.0 release cycle. It was later updated by Glen Barber <gjb@FreeBSD.org> to include the release.sh script used for the FreeBSD 9.2 release cycle. FreeBSD 15.0 October 13, 2025 RELEASE(7)
NAME | DESCRIPTION | CLEAN RELEASE GENERATION | EMBEDDED BUILDS | VIRTUAL MACHINE DISK IMAGES | CLOUD HOSTING MACHINE IMAGES | OCI IMAGES | MAKEFILE TARGETS | ENVIRONMENT | FILES | EXAMPLES | COMPATIBILITY | SEE ALSO | HISTORY | AUTHORS
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