Solved Where to download legacy ports tree for old version of STABLE?

[rowan194]

I have a legacy system running 9-STABLE (in a VM, heavily firewalled!)

I downloaded ports.txz from http://ftp-archive.freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD-Archive/old-releases/amd64/9.3-RELEASE/ , and amazingly, the few ports I've tried have downloaded and compiled successfully, without needing to manually hunt for specific versions of distfiles.

One problem is that the packages seem to be going backwards in version, eg rsync from 3.1.2 (likely installed as a binary around 8 to 9 years ago) to 3.1.0 (freshly compiled)

Where can I find the very last version of ports for a legacy branch? Thanks.

SOLUTION:

git clone https://git.freebsd.org/ports.git   # XXX clones into current dir
cd ports
git checkout tags/9-eol                       # change as appropriate, eg 11-eol
rm -R .git

 

[covacat]

you can probably do it with git. get the version just before 9.x went out of support.
or without git look for the latest release (any version closest to 9.x EOL)
looks to be 10.3

 

[covacat]

if you can get a newer make working you can user even newer versions of the ports tree (even current)
you just need a version of make thats support stuff in /usr/ports/Mk/*

 

[SirDice]

Where can I find the very last version of ports for a legacy branch?

Doesn't exist. Ports tree isn't linked to any specific version. Ports tree is in git, you can go as far back in history as you want with it.

 

[cracauer@]

The git ports tree contains tags for en of release cycles, such as "14.0-eol".

 

[rowan194]

you can probably do it with git. get the version just before 9.x went out of support.
or without git look for the latest release (any version closest to 9.x EOL)
looks to be 10.3

Great tip. I hadn't considered the gap between the final release and branch EOL, which is presumably why the original rsync binary is dated ~2 years after 9.3-RELEASE.

The git ports tree contains tags for en of release cycles, such as "14.0-eol".

Do you mean on https://github.com/freebsd/freebsd-ports , or somewhere else? I can only see release/x.x.x tags
(EDIT: found it on https://cgit.freebsd.org/ports/refs/ , thanks)
(EDIT 2: no git installed, slight chicken and egg problem...)

 

[SirDice]

(EDIT 2: no git installed, slight chicken and egg problem...)

Doing the checkout on a more recent machine and just copy the directory? You may want to skip the .git directory when copying to save some space.

 

[SirDice]

9-STABLE

I hadn't considered the gap between the final release and branch EOL

It also depends on the exact -STABLE version, 9.0-STABLE existed between 9.0-RELEASE and 9.1-RELEASE, 9.1-STABLE was between 9.1-RELEASE and 9.2-RELEASE, and so on. Support model was a bit different back then too. Odd minor versions had 2 year support, even minor versions had 1 year (.0 always was 1 year).

 

[rowan194]

Thanks everyone. OP updated with git solution.

Ports from 10.3.0 tag work with 9-STABLE make, but ports from 10.4.0 tag don't

So I guess there's not really a simple path forward with upgrades for current packages (unless I can get the system make upgraded), but at least I can install new packages.