best way to run -RELEASE and -CURRENT on the same machine

[David Wolfskill]

I won't claim that the approach I use is "best" for anyone (even me),
but it generally works adequately for my purposes.

I use a dual- (actually, quad-)boot approach, and set up the file
systems in such a way that /usr/local is a symlink from each bootable
environment to the same place.

On my home "build machine," I maintain private FreeBSD repo mirrors; I
mirror those onto my laptop.  I use the above-sketched approach on both
the build machine & my laptop, and (at present) track stable/8 & head on
those machines on a daily basis.

I update the ports (on each machine) while running stable/8.

Naturally, if the goal were to be to test port-building or the function
& stability of a port under head, this appraoch will not be suitable.

To make this a bit more complete, I periodically (at present, each
Sunday) install the latest built snapshot of stable/8 on my "production"
machines here at home.  Note that I am actually using "development"
branches for this; that may or may not make sense for a given situation.

(I had managed to get started on the multi-boot appraoch before jails
existed -- it's a minor variation of an approach I used to use on IBM
mainframes back in the 80s.  It's plausible that some form of
virtualization or the use of jails would do the job for me, but I'm
fairly comfortable using what I'm familiar with.)

Peace,
david
-- 
David H. Wolfskill				david at catwhisker.org
Depriving a girl or boy of an opportunity for education is evil.

See http://www.catwhisker.org/~david/publickey.gpg for my public key.
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