Updating and downgrading your system

Since the introduction of package management you can update your system in place using the pkgman command or the SoftwareUpdater application. The update process is straightforward, requires an internet connection, and requires a single reboot. pkgman/SoftwareUpdater will handle obtaining the latest updates and applying them to your system.

Bleeding edge

Besides normal updates of your installed software and stable Haiku release, you can switch Haiku to Nightly builds (and back to stable release).

Warning: Bleeding edge updates may occasionally fail if major ABI updates have taken place since the last update was performed. While problems are rare, having backups is recommended before updating.

Switching to Stable/Nightly builds

To update your system to packages in the respective repository, there are a few simple steps to perform. (do not add single quotes around the urls, the $(getarch) is meant to be substituted by the shell)

Nightly (unstable) builds

Add the recommended stock nightly repository:

pkgman add https://eu.hpkg.haiku-os.org/haiku/master/$(getarch)/current

Update to the latest packages:
```
pkgman full-sync
```
Reboot once complete:
```
shutdown -r
```

Stable (r1beta5 in this example) builds

HaikuPorts is currently 'master' for both Stable and Nightly builds.

Add the recommended stock stable (r1beta5) repositoris:

pkgman add https://eu.hpkg.haiku-os.org/haiku/r1beta5/$(getarch)/current

Update to the latest packages:
```
pkgman full-sync
```
Reboot once complete:
```
shutdown -r
```

Freeing some disk space

When updating, old packages are kept in directories named "state_..." in /system/packages/administrative/ to allow booting with previous states in case an update fails. After a while you might want to free up some disk space. You can safely remove the oldest state folders there, as well as the "transaction-..." ones. Do not touch the other directories though.

Downgrading to a previous revision

It's possible that an update to the latest Haiku revision (hrev) introduced a regression you're not willing to live with. From the boot options menu you can load a former, working hrev (see the user guide's Boot Loader - Troubleshooting). Find the last working state and boot into it.

To permanently downgrade to this revision, you have to point the 'Haiku' repository to that hrev. You find the current revision under "About Haiku" from the Deskbar. As example, for hrev56231:

pkgman add https://eu.hpkg.haiku-os.org/haiku/master/$(getarch)/r1~beta3_hrev56231

With "pkgman full-sync" you can now downgrade to that hrev56231.

Note, that you're now 'stuck' with that revision. You should report the regression and help to fix it, if you can. Once fixed - watch the commit logs - you can change back to the "current" repo.

You cannot point to any hrev that way. To see which ones are available, put the above URL into the browser, with the expanded architecture, sans the actual hrev designation.

For 64bit architecture that would be:

https://eu.hpkg.haiku-os.org/haiku/master/x86_64

For 32bit:

https://eu.hpkg.haiku-os.org/haiku/master/x86_gcc2