69 lines
3.3 KiB
Plaintext
69 lines
3.3 KiB
Plaintext
<!-- $Id: synching.sgml,v 1.2 1996/08/29 04:26:42 jkh Exp $ -->
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<!-- The FreeBSD Documentation Project -->
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<chapt><heading>Synchronizing source trees over the Internet<label id="synching"></heading>
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<p><em>Contributed by &a.jkh;.</em>
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<!--
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Last updated: $Date: 1996/08/29 04:26:42 $
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This document tries to describe the various ways in which a user may
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use the internet to keep development sources in synch.
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-->
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<p>There are various ways of using an Internet (or email) connection
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to stay up-to-date with any given area of the FreeBSD project sources,
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or all areas, depending on what interests you. The primary
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services we offer are CTM, SUP and CVSup (<bf>new</bf>).
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<p>It's been suggested by some that CTM obsoletes SUP. This isn't quite
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true, in fact, because each tool was originally designed to serve a
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different constituency and, although they have both undergone significant
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improvement since first going into service, they take fundamentally
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different approaches in trying to solve the source synchronization problem.
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SUP was originally designed to support those who had dedicated (or at
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least fast) Internet connections whereas CTM was originally aimed at
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supporting those who's access was limited to email only.
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<p><bf>SUP</bf> (Software Update Protocol) is a system that tracks a local
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copy of the FreeBSD sources on your local disk and, using configuration files
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the user sets up, makes requests over the network to fetch and update any
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files which have changed on the FreeBSD master archive.
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<p><bf>CTM</bf>, on the other hand, does not interactively compare
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the sources you have with those on the master archive.
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Instead, a script which identifies changes in files since its previous run
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is executed several times a day on the master archive, any detected changes
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being compressed, stamped with a sequence-number and encoded for transmission
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over email (printable ASCII only). Once received, these "CTM deltas" can then
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be handed to the ctm_rmail(1) utility which will automatically decode, verify
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and apply the changes to the user's copy of the sources. This process is
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far more efficient than SUP, and places less strain on our server resources
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since it's a <em>push</em> rather than a <em>pull</em> model.
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<p>There are other trade-offs, of course. With SUP, you can also
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inadvertently wipe out portions of your archive and SUP will detect
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and rebuild the damaged portions for you. CTM won't do this, and if
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you wipe some portion of your source tree out (and don't have it backed
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up) then you will have to start from scratch (from the most recent CVS
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"base delta") and rebuild it all.
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<p>More recently, the waters have been muddied even more by
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the introduction of the <bf>CVSup</bf> utility, a highly efficient
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replacement for SUP which also offers access to any branch of FreeBSD
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development from a single CVS repository (which, in turn, can also be
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transferred non-destructively with CVSup - any local developer work on
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independant branches is preserved). It overcomes many of SUP's shortcomings
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and may be <htmlurl url="ftp://freefall.freebsd.org/pub/CVSup/"
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name="downloaded"> from our development server, where additional documentation
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is also provided. Both the CVSup client and server are compatible with
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the sup and supfilesrv distribution file formats.
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For more information on SUP and CTM, please see one of the following
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sections:
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⊃
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&ctm;
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