Free BSD 8.1

[Chip Camden]

Quoth Mike Clarke on Monday, 27 September 2010:
> On Monday 27 September 2010, perryh at pluto.rain.com wrote:
> 
> > I've recently started on a new system, and am planning to install
> > 8.1-RELEASE, including the corresponding ports tree; then install
> > what ports I can from packages and also fetch the corresponding
> > distfiles; and finally build -- from release-corresponding ports --
> > any that aren't available as packages or where I want non-default
> > OPTION settings.  That approach should avoid most nasty surprises
> > while getting things set up and working.  _After_ everything is
> > installed and configured properly will be plenty soon enough to
> > consider whether any ports need to be updated -- and the already-
> > installed-and-working package collection will provide a fallback
> > in case of trouble trying to build any updated versions.
> 
> The problem is if/when you need to update a port as a result of a 
> security advisory. If your ports tree is very much out of date then 
> it's likely that updating that one port will require a number of 
> dependencies to be updated as well, sometimes all the ports depending 
> on one or more of the updated dependencies need to be updated as well 
> and the resultant bag of worms can take quite a lot of sorting out. 
> The "little and often" approach of keeping the ports tree up to date 
> could be less traumatic.
> 
> -- 
> Mike Clarke

That's the maxim under which I operate.  Furthermore, if something does
break, it's a lot easier to narrow down what broke it if you updated one
or two ports instead of twenty or thirty.

I use the same principle in following STABLE -- frequently update/build so if
anything goes wrong, the number of culpable commits is small.

-- 
Sterling (Chip) Camden    | sterling at camdensoftware.com | 2048D/3A978E4F
http://camdensoftware.com | http://chipstips.com        | http://chipsquips.com
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