Clarification Of In Place Upgrade Process

[RW]

On Sat, 06 Feb 2010 13:00:23 -0600
Tim Daneliuk <tundra at tundraware.com> wrote:

> When migrating from 6.x to 7.x and to do system refreshes within a
> given release branch, I did/do this:
> 
> 	- Get sources
>         - mergemaster -i
> 	- make buildworld buildkernel

I'm pretty sure you are supposed to install the kernel here and then
reboot into single user mode. Typically you can skip this kind of thing
but I wouldn't push my luck on a major upgrade

> 	- go single user
>         - make installworld installkernel
>         - reboot



> I now wish to do the same to get to the 8.x branch, BUT ... somewhere
> on USENET, someone commented that you have to also reinstall/rebuild
> all the packages/ports when you do this.  This was news to me.  Is
> there some reason the entire application base has to be reinstalled
> when moving to a new branch?  If so, has this always been the case or
> is it new for 8.x?  My 6.x -> 7.x upgrade went flawlessly using the
> method above without touching the ports/packages tree.

It's prudent to do it. When you cross a major boundary your packages
will be linked to obsolete libraries that have been left behind until
you do a make delete-old-libs or make delete-old. They will continue to
work but may develop security problems, or conflicts as you
update piecemeal