Freebsd-update and release candidates

[Jan Henrik Sylvester]

On 01/-10/-28163 20:59, Renato Botelho wrote:
> On Tue, Feb 22, 2011 at 11:04 AM, Svein Skogen<svein at stillbilde.net>  wrote:
>> I'm in the process of setting up a small network of FreeBSD
>> installations. My plan (this time) is to keep them on branches available
>> to freebsd-update, instead of depending on source being checked out from
>> CVS.
>>
>> However, I'm a wee bit curious of whether I will be able to upgrade from
>> 8.2RC3 or if I should wait until 8.2 is actually released with the setup
>> (I _CAN_ wait a week or two).
>
> If you are running 8.2-RC3, you can safely run freebsd-update to go
> to 8.2-RELEASE.
>
> # freebsd-update -r 8.2-RELEASE upgrade

You can see for yourself, which releases are supported by 
freebsd-update: http://update4.freebsd.org/

Since 7.2, every BETA, RC, and RELEASE has been available via 
freebsd-update (i386 and amd64).

I think, the binary diffs are not generated for every combination, but 
since freebsd-update will fallback to downloading the whole files, even 
leaving out a few releases should always work. The official 
announcements usually contain a list of releases supported by 
freebsd-update, for example 8.2-RC3 was available from 8.0-RELEASE, 
8.1-RELEASE, 8.2-BETA1, 8.2-RC1, 8.2-RC2, and "earlier FreeBSD releases 
(FreeBSD 7.x)".

BTW: The 8.2-RELEASE bits are on freebsd-update for almost a day 
already, the ISOs even a little bit longer, but as always: Wait for the 
official announcement that is scheduled for today.

Cheers,
Jan Henrik