Small understanding question buildworld

[genebrecht]

After my gusto and because it's the traditional way, I've gotten used to building everything and forgoing binaries.

I'm over now
stumbled and am pleased that boots very fast.

From which changes in the source tree should one renounce it and completely rebuild everything? Can there be any problems if you do not completely build in the middle?
Is an interval of 6 months to build completely advisable or overdosed?

Hope the question is understood correctly.

 

[Yamagi]

Hello,
it depends. If you're using the classic build system it's a good idea to rebuild everything once in a while. I did it about every 3 to 4 month. But if you're running a lot of build it's highly recomended to use the so called 'Meta Mode', introduced in with FreeBSD 11.2. 'Meta Mode' is much more reliable with incremental build and - at least in theory - a little bit faster:

# Make sure that /usr/obj is empty before building for the first time
rm -rf /usr/obj/*

# Activate Meta Mode
echo "WITH_META_MODE=\"YES\" >> /etc/src-env.conf

# Load the kernel module
echo "filemon_load=\"YES\"" >> /boot/loader.conf
kldload filemon

Whenever you want to update you system you'll just start a normal build:

make -j $(sysctl -n hw.ncpu) buildworld buildkernel

The system will figure out what's need to be rebuild. If the build completes the result is guaranteed to be consistent.