I'm CC'ing port-i386 so I don't get a bunch of email asking the same
question :-)

On Tue, 2 Jan 2001, Bill Hudspeth wrote:
> Due to my general ignorance of BSD, I must ask just what I must do to
> implement
> the new XFree86 snapshot i just downloaded from your ftp site. Also, I
> assume I
> must rerun xf86config to fit the new X server.

It's just a tarball, you'll need to untar it to the root directory (/).
However, this can be iffy if you have XFree86 3.3.6 installed already. You
_could_ move your current /usr/X11R6 out of the way, but this may move
some X11 packages you have installed already out of the way. It might be
better to rebuild them anyway, it depends on how much time you're willing
to spend.

Having that out of the way, if you're willing to spend the time you can
execute the following series of commands:
  mv /usr/X11R6 /usr/X11R6.3
  cd /
  tar -zxvvpf /path/to/xfree.tgz

Alternately, you can install XFree86 4.0.2 over top of your current 3.3.6
install. The same commands as above:
  cd /
  tar -zxvvpf /path/to/xfree.tgz
Your XFree86 4.0.2 and 3.3.6 stuff will be mixed together, but XFree86
4.0.2 should still work. This way you won't need to rebuild all of your
X11 packages.

Of course, if you don't have XFree86 3.3.6 installed, you can just untar
it to / using the above set of commands.

And yes, xf86config must be run. XFree86 4.0 also implements a new way of
configuring the X server, 'XFree86 -configure', although I haven't tried
this on NetBSD.

Hope this helps,
Jared