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freebsd
freebsd-src
C2012–2026
freebsd / freebsd-src

freebsd-src

The FreeBSD src tree publish-only repository. Experimenting with 'simple' pull requests....

Systems & Infrastructure
Explore on GitHubRead Hacker News discussions
122Distinct people
189Mentions
1Explicit recommenders
9.5KGitHub stars
REPOSITORY AT A GLANCE

What to know before exploring

What it is

The FreeBSD src tree publish-only repository. Experimenting with 'simple' pull requests....

GitHub

Where it is used

No documented product use was verified in the last source check.

What people are saying

My favorite piece of man trivia is from the source of the tunefs BSD man page, which contains: .\" Take this out and a Unix Daemon will dog your steps from now until .\" the…

beej71 used a recommendation phrase. One indexed comment matches. This is a phrase match, not a verdict.

No classified warning is attached to this page. Read the discussions before treating silence as approval.

Also in these discussions

Mentioned in the same Hacker News threads. That is not proof they are substitutes.

This week on Hacker News

Nov 8–Nov 15 UTC · Direct repository links and separately labeled related project stories. Indexed through 11/15/2026, 12:45:45 PM UTC.

No direct repository links were found in the indexed HN discussions over the past seven days. Older discussions are available below.

Mentions over time

HN mentions by year189 dated mentions

Observed mentions: 2012-05-14 23:44:07 UTC to 2026-10-26 20:08:28 UTC.

01020302012-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2013-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 1 mentions; 0 submissions, 1 comments20122013-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2014-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 2 mentions; 0 submissions, 2 comments2014-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2015-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 7 mentions; 0 submissions, 7 comments2015-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 8 mentions; 0 submissions, 8 comments2016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 4 mentions; 0 submissions, 4 comments2017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 16 mentions; 1 submissions, 15 comments2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 17 mentions; 0 submissions, 17 comments2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 14 mentions; 1 submissions, 13 comments20192020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 28 mentions; 2 submissions, 26 comments2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 20 mentions; 1 submissions, 19 comments2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 24 mentions; 0 submissions, 24 comments2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 23 mentions; 0 submissions, 23 comments2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 10 mentions; 2 submissions, 8 comments2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 10 mentions; 1 submissions, 9 comments2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2027-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 5 mentions; 0 submissions, 5 comments. Incomplete calendar period.2026*

* An incomplete calendar period is marked with an outlined bar. Its count is not directly comparable with a full period.

Counts come from the repository’s dated source evidence. Index cutoff: 2026-11-02 08:16:59 UTC.

View mention counts and date ranges
UTC ranges include their start and exclude their end. Select a period to filter the source evidence.
PeriodStart (UTC)End (exclusive, UTC)MentionsSubmissionsComments
20122012-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2013-01-01 00:00:00 UTC101
20132013-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2014-01-01 00:00:00 UTC202
20142014-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2015-01-01 00:00:00 UTC707
20152015-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC808
20162016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC404
20172017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC16115
20182018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC17017
20192019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC14113
20202020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC28226
20212021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC20119
20222022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC24024
20232023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC23023
20242024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC1028
20252025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC1019
2026 (partial)2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2027-01-01 00:00:00 UTC505

From the project README

An excerpt from the repository, fetched Nov 13, 2026.

Read the project’s introduction
FreeBSD Source: This is the top level of the FreeBSD source directory. FreeBSD is an operating system used to power modern servers, desktops, and embedded platforms. A large community has continually developed it for more than thirty years. Its advanced networking, security, and storage features have made FreeBSD the platform of choice for many of the busiest web sites and most pervasive embedded networking and storage devices. For copyright information, please see the file COPYRIGHT in this directory. Additional copyright information also exists for some sources in this tree - please see the specific source directories for more information. The Makefile in this directory supports a number of targets for building components (or all) of the FreeBSD source tree. See build(7), config(8), FreeBSD handbook on building userland, and Handbook for kernels for more information, including setting make(1) variables. For information on the CPU architectures and platforms supported by FreeBSD, see the FreeBSD website's Platforms page. For official FreeBSD bootable images, see the release page. Source Roadmap: Directory Description bin System/user commands. cddl Source code for third-party software under the Common Development and Distribution License. contrib Source code for third-party software. crypto Source code for cryptographic libraries and commands (see crypto/README). etc Template files for /etc. include System include files. kerberos5 Build system for Kerberos 5 (Heimdal). krb5 Build system for Kerberos 5 (MIT). lib System libraries. libexec System commands intended to be executed by other commands or daemons. packages Base system packages. release Makefiles and scripts used for building releases and VM images. rescue Build system for statically linked /rescue commands. sbin System commands. secure Build system for cryptographic libraries and commands (excluding Kerberos). share Shared resources. stand Boot loader sources. sys Kernel sources (see sys/README.md). targets Support for experimental DIRDEPS_BUILD tests Tests which can be run by Kyua. See tests/README for additional information. tools Ancillary utilities and tests (not included in the build). usr.bin User commands. usr.sbin System administration commands. For information on synchronizing your source tree with one or more of the FreeBSD Project's development branches, please see FreeBSD Handbook.
Read the full README on GitHub

What Hacker News says

10 sources
mmsc·Oct 12, 2024
One of the problems with suspend/resume is simply: nobody is looking at it or trying to improve it. There is no progress because nobody has tried. The current recommendation is "if suspend/resume doesn't work, disable all of the drivers until you work out which one (of many?) is causing the issue, and work on a fix - sure, people could do that, but most won't - and not even knowing which driver is the issue is annoying. Until recently, rc scripts (think initd on Linux) had functionality that could be executed on system resume, but not on system suspend - like stopping a service on suspend. Why? Simply because nobody added that functionality for ages [0]. Similarly, drivers often have suspension but not resume capabilities (why?) which means they need to be added by someone who actually tries to use suspend/resume. [1] is an example of thi
Read the rest
s (around midway through the section). I recently took the time to get FreeBSD set up on my MacBook Pro from 2015, and it took quite a few kernel patches to get it working - many of which I don't think should have been missing already [2]. Webcam support is another issue; at the moment, webcamd is unmaintained because the developer passed away. Even then, it is just an emulator for Linux's USB subsystem and relies on some random person's GitHub for v4l2-loopback support using a branch called "my-build"[3]. Wifi is also an issue, with the best option for fast wifi support being the usage of a nano Alpine Linux VM, and using Linux's drivers [4]. If your wifi device is even supported, it's probably quite slow. If all three of these things ever progress, I can see FreeBSD being more accepted by the masses. It is a great OS, but for personal computing, there are clear issues. 0: https://github.com/freebsd/freebsd-src/commit/2cf8ef5910fd37... 1: https://joshua.hu/FreeBSD-on-MacbookPro-114-A1398#building-w... 2: https://joshua.hu/FreeBSD-on-MacbookPro-114-A1398 3: https://github.com/swills/v4l2loopback/tree/my-build 4: https://man.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?query=wifibox&apropos=0&...
In FreeBSD: How Can We Make It More Attractive to New Users?
BSDobelix·Aug 29, 2024
Because the System has to be self-hosting, remember it's a whole OS and not just the Kernel, and as you can see ~25% of src is C++, 62% C etc. Rewrite everything C++ is not a small undertaking with (maybe?) not allot plus-sides, and even then you still need C++ because of LLVM. LLVM and GCC are both C++, and you have to compile the Compiler (self-hosting), and even if your a 100% Rust or C OS, you still need C++ because of LLVM/GCC....well if you want a modern compiler ;) https://github.com/freebsd/freebsd-src
In FreeBSD considers Rust in the base system
jchw·Aug 27, 2024
That doesn't sound very compelling: C is still a much more popular language than Rust and a lot simpler too. I realize the latter is somewhat subjective, but it's blatant enough that I'm willing to assert it confidently. If you want to know how to add a feature to ls in GNU coreutils, you don't have to look very far. The whole program is in src/ls.c. It's pretty large due to the amount of options, but it's pretty simple code all things considered. If you look at a program with less switches, like mkdir, it's even easier. https://github.com/coreutils/coreutils/blob/master/src/mkdir... So what about FreeBSD? Well, not only does it have an official GitHub mirror, but it even accepts "simple" pull requests, apparently. And the implementation of ls is a bit more approachable, since BSD utilities typically don't have as much functionality. http
Read the rest
s://github.com/freebsd/freebsd-src/blob/main/bin/ls/ls.c I don't think Rust is going to make things significantly more accessible. It does indeed draw people in and maybe make them less fearful versus C, but in practice a lot of the reason why contributing to these large projects is scary is nothing to do with the language and more to do with the arduous requirements of any project that is as complicated and widely used as they are. For example, does Rust actually make kernel development more accessible? Maybe not: > Despite more novice developers being attracted by Rust to the kernel community, we have found their commits are mainly for constructing Rust-relevant toolchains as well as Rust crates alone; they do not, however, take part in kernel code development. By contrast, 5 out of 6 investigated drivers (as seen in Table 5) are mainly contributed by authors from the Linux community. This implies a disconnection between the young and the seasoned developers, and that the bar of kernel programming is not lowered by Rust language. https://www.usenix.org/conference/atc24/presentation/li-hong... So if you want to add a feature to ls, maybe you shouldn't wait for operating systems to switch to Rust alternatives. But when you think about it, it is not surprising that adding a feature to ls is not easy. I mean, you really wouldn't want new features being added to utilities like ls without a ton of care and thought put in, and that is true no matter what language the utility is written in. The difficulty of contributing to some projects has very, very little to do with the actual process of writing code.
In FreeBSD-rustdate, a reimplementation of FreeBSD-update
deaddodo·Aug 27, 2024
> I did some looking at freebsd-update, and it's quite the shell script, which makes it daunting to consider changing. All the forking and whatever doesn't seem great; using data structures should be a lot simpler! It doesn't look too crazy: https://github.com/freebsd/freebsd-src/blob/main/usr.sbin/fr... It's fairly well broken down, and pretty well organized. I think the most difficult part is that so much of it relies on shell nice-isms that are a pain to re-implement in something like C (although, I guess you could just call fetch and the like directly via 'exec' or 'system'; rather than using their libraries to manage things directly).
In FreeBSD-rustdate, a reimplementation of FreeBSD-update
jart·Jun 24, 2024
Cosmo author here. I'm familiar with the new rules. They were first implemented in https://github.com/freebsd/freebsd-src/commit/e0f5c1387df23c... which makes a clear intentional allowance for what APE is doing. If you look at the hex dump: main jart@luna:~/llamafile$ hexdump -C cat | head 00000000 4d 5a 71 46 70 44 3d 27 0a 0a 00 10 00 f8 00 00 |MZqFpD='........| 00000010 00 00 00 00 00 01 00 08 40 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 |........@.......| You'll notice there's no NUL characters on the first line, and that the subsequent NULs are escaped by a single-quoted string, which is legal. The rules used to be more restrictive but they relaxed the requirements specifically so I could work on APE. Jilles Tjoelker is one of the heroes who made that possible.
In Cosmopolitan v3.5

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