HOWTO: Updating ports and sources using svnup on FreeBSD

If you're used to using cvsup/csup , they're deprecated/End of Life. It's time you moved to subversion which is now the official method of updating from source. However subversion has a long list of dependencies (try a pkg_add -r subversion and see). Now there's a lite version in ports,  svnup:

#pkg_add -r svnup , OR
#cd /usr/ports/net/svnup && make install clean

Syntax is simple too. To update ports tree,

#svnup -h svn.freebsd.org -b ports/head -l /usr/ports

To update to 8-STABLE sources,

#svnup -h svn.freebsd.org -b base/stable/8 -l /usr/src


One note of warning. Svnup does not support subversion's .svn directory. Use one or the other only.

More info: http://www.freshports.org/net/svnup/

Update (6 Jun 2013): Latest version (0.73) does not appear to work with above cmd lines. There is now a .conf file in /usr/local/etc/svnup.conf. Edit that, change protocol from https to svn, uncomment hostname. I get a segfault though.

<snip>

( get-file ( 30:/contrib/libreadline/display.c ( 251374 ) true false ) )
==========
>> Response:
Segmentation fault (core dumped)c/gnu/usr.bin/groff/src/devices/grohtml/Makefile

Probably best to use the full subversion port at this time since svnup seems to be a work in progress.

Update (26 July): Svnup works. To get it working, chg protocol as per above, choose which stable branch you want, then merely run

#svnup stable

Much easier than remembering parameters.