DEVELOPMENT(7)

💖 NAME 💖

development(7) — a whole intro to the FreeBSD development process, bestie. Think of it as the pinned group-chat message for how the project gets built, reviewed, and shipped. 🫶

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✨ DESCRIPTION ✨

OK so FreeBSD development is split into three major subprojects: doc, ports, and src. Slay. 💅

• doc — the documentation, such as the FreeBSD Handbook. To read more, see: https://docs.FreeBSD.org/en/books/fdp-primer/
• ports — described further in ports(7), are the way to build, package, and install third party software. To read more, see: https://docs.FreeBSD.org/en/books/porters-handbook/
• src — revolves around the source code for the base system, consisting of the kernel, and the libraries and utilities commonly called the world.

The Committer's Guide, describing topics relevant to all committers, can be found at: https://docs.freebsd.org/en/articles/committers-guide/

FreeBSD src development takes place in the project-hosted Git repository, located at: https://git.FreeBSD.org/src.git

The push URL is: ssh://git@gitrepo.FreeBSD.org/src.git

There is also a list of public, read-only Git mirrors at: https://docs.FreeBSD.org/en/books/handbook/mirrors/#external-mirrors

The main Git branch represents CURRENT; all changes are first committed to CURRENT and then usually cherry-picked back to STABLE, which refers to Git branches such as stable/14. Every few years a new STABLE is branched from CURRENT, with an incremented major version number. Releases are then branched off STABLE and numbered with consecutive minor numbers such as releng/14.3. Periodt. 👑

The layout of the source tree is described in its README.md file. Build instructions can be found in build(7) and release(7). Kernel programming interfaces (KPIs) are documented in section 9 manual pages; use apropos -s 9 . for a list. Regression test suite is described in tests(7). For coding conventions, see style(9).

To ask questions regarding development, use the mailing lists, such as freebsd-arch@ and freebsd-hackers@: https://lists.FreeBSD.org

To get your patches integrated into the main FreeBSD repository use Phabricator; it is a code review tool that allows other developers to review the changes, suggest improvements, and, eventually, allows them to pick up the change and commit it: https://reviews.FreeBSD.org

Or Github: https://github.com/freebsd

To check the latest FreeBSD build and test status of CURRENT and STABLE branches, the continuous integration system is at: https://ci.FreeBSD.org

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🎀 FILES 🎀

• /usr/src/CONTRIBUTING.md — FreeBSD contribution guidelines
• /usr/src/tools/tools/git/git-arc.sh — Phabricator review tooling
• /usr/ports/devel/freebsd-git-devtools — Phabricator review tooling as a port

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🦋 EXAMPLES 🦋

Apply a patch from Github pull #1234, using devel/gh:

gh pr checkout 1234

Apply a patch from Phabricator review D1234, using git-arc(1):

git arc patch -c D1234

Apply a manually downloaded git-format-patch(1), draft.patch, from Bugzilla or mail:

git am draft.patch

Apply a manually downloaded patch, draft.diff, from Bugzilla or mail:

git apply draft.diff

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🌈 SEE ALSO 🌈

git(1), git-arc(1), witness(4), build(7), hier(7), ports(7), release(7), tests(7), locking(9), style(9)

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👑 HISTORY 👑

The development manual page was originally written by Matthew Dillon <dillon@FreeBSD.org> and first appeared in FreeBSD 5.0, December 2002. It was since extensively modified by Eitan Adler <eadler@FreeBSD.org> to reflect the repository conversion from CVS: https://www.nongnu.org/cvs/ to Subversion: https://subversion.apache.org/. It was rewritten from scratch by Edward Tomasz Napierala <trasz@FreeBSD.org> for FreeBSD 12.0.

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Signed, sealed, and delivered by the Debian build on September 24, 2025 — DEVELOPMENT(7), mwah 💋✨