Free BSD 8.1

[Ryan Coleman]

On Sep 28, 2010, at 2:02 AM, perryh at pluto.rain.com wrote:

> Mike Clarke <jmc-freebsd2 at milibyte.co.uk> wrote:
>> 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 If your ports tree is very much out of date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.
> 
> and, in this context, your point is?
> 
> I'm advocating starting from a stable and self-consistent baseline,
> consisting of a release _and_ its corresponding port/package
> collection, and then considering whether any updates are needed.
> Isn't that orthogonal to the question of whether or not to follow
> ports updates, once the baseline has been established?

As I understand it: The OS itself is stable, but the ports are constantly in flux and may be issues.

Please correct me if I am wrong.