RELEASE(7)

📦
version 15.1 · 3 versions
, in freebsd 15.1, nixpkgs unstable

🎀 NAME 🎀

release — release building infrastructure.

okay bestie, this is the Miscellaneous Information Manual page for release(7), and it's basically the blueprint for building full FreeBSD releases. 💅

✨ 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 — yes, that's literally the name, and it's iconic. 💖

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). clean girl build energy ✨

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. highkey read up first, bestie.

The release build process requires that /usr/obj be populated with the output of make buildworld and make buildkernel. This is necessary to provide 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 chroot(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. periodt.

💖 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. no cap, the clean environment is the whole point 🫶

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) environment. Next, make release is run within the chroot(8) environment and places the result in $CHROOTDIR/R. slay.

The optional release.conf configuration file supports the following variables:

  • CHROOTDIR — the directory within which the release will be built. Defaults to /scratch.
  • CHROOT_MAKEENV — additional make(1) arguments to pass through, which directly 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. Defaults 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 release.

For the supported list of TARGET and TARGET_ARCH combinations, 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 system 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 compressing 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 chroot(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) repository 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 installing 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 embedded device release builds.

When set, WITH_DVD is unset. Additionally, EMBEDDED_TARGET and EMBEDDED_TARGET_ARCH must also be defined. 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 images 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) target. 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 capacity. 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.
🚨 Deprecated alert: VMFS is deprecated, bestie — it's giving legacy vibes.
  • VMFSLIST — set to specify the list of file system types to build images 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 ☁️

okay so the FreeBSD release build tools are not just out here making one generic image — they literally support building virtual machine images for a whole bunch of cloud hosting providers, and each one has its own specific configuration so that provider's support is baked in by default. iconic behavior honestly 💅

The following make(1) environment variables are supported:

  • CLOUDWARE — set this to a list of one or more cloud hosting providers, wrapped in quotes. bestie, it requires WITH_CLOUDWARE to also be set.
  • WITH_CLOUDWARE — set this to a non-empty value to enable building virtual machine images for the various cloud hosting providers. it requires CLOUDWARE to also be set.

Also!! both CLOUDWARE and WITH_CLOUDWARE can be dropped into release.conf and used together with release.sh. teamwork 🫶

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. ngl, experimental means experimental, so go in knowing that. This is enabled using a release.conf variable:

  • WITH_OCIIMAGES — set to a non-null value to build OCI base images.

🛠️ MAKEFILE TARGETS 🛠️

So the release makefile (src/release/Makefile) is, and I'm quoting the vibes here, fairly abstruse. Most developers will only ever care about the release and install targets. that's it, that's the whole relationship 😌

  • release — meta-target to build all release media and distributions applicable to this platform. the main character 🎀
  • 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 installation distribution sets are not included. the low-key version 💀
  • 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) environment 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 targets.
  • 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.
heads up bestie: reldoc gets removed later on in this page — see COMPATIBILITY. yes i'm being serious, keep scrolling 💀

🌱 ENVIRONMENT 🌱

Optional variables, all of them, no skips:

  • OSRELEASE — optional base name for generated media images when invoking the install target (e.g., FreeBSD-12.1-RELEASE-amd64). Defaults 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 default, /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 release.
  • 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 architectures. 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 different 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 platform. Typically, one only needs to set TARGET.

📁 FILES 📁

the whole lineup, every single one 🌸

  • /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 🧪

okay this is the part where it gets good. The following sequence of commands can be used to build a "-CURRENT snapshot":

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 directory. slay 🎉

The following sequence of commands can be used to build a "-CURRENT snapshot" 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. cute and configurable 💖

⚠️ COMPATIBILITY ⚠️

The reldoc target was removed in commit f61e92ca5a23, and DOCDIR, DOCBRANCH, DOC_UPDATE_SKIP, and NODOC are therefore no longer supported. rip to those, they're gone gone 🪦

👀 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 demands on available file systems and was quite torturous to execute. literally torture, no cap 😭

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 environment.

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 support 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. nearly a thousand revisions of pure struggle, i respect it deeply 🫡

👑 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 <murray@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.

and that's the whole page bestie, you ate that 💅✨ this lil writeup came to you from the Debian source, version matching RELEASE(7), dated October 13, 2025 — screenshot the date, it's iconic, bye 🦋🎀

📦 where this page comes from