Patch vs. Upgrade

David Kirchner dpk at dpk.net
Thu Oct 13 10:16:18 PDT 2005


On 10/12/05, David Kirchner <dpk at dpk.net> wrote:
> On 10/12/05, Andrew P. <infofarmer at gmail.com> wrote:
> > That's just not true. Cvsupping to something like
> > RELENG_5_4 will do exactly the same thing as
> > a patch, only it's the hassle-free way. You see
> > a sec-advisory, you type "cvsup -g -L 2 mysup"
> > recompile what's suggested in the advisory, or
> > the whole world - and you're done.
>
> cvsupping to RELENG_5_4 will include all of those patches, not just
> the one you just read about. So if you had to avoid installing a patch
> for some reason (you had a local solution, or something, it happens
> sometimes) then you need to avoid using the cvsup method.

I just tried this again to verify. cvsuping to RELENG_5_4 gives you
5.4-STABLE, which includes _many_ things not found in the
5.4-RELEASE-p?? branch. I'm not saying people shouldn't upgrade to
5.4-STABLE (although I do think efforts should be directed towards
including bugfixes in the 5.4-RELEASE-p?? branch) but that they should
be aware that cvsup'ing to RELENG_5_4 will give them a very different
result to patching the specific security advisory patches.


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