About Patches

[Colin Percival]

Matthew Seaman <m.seaman at infracaninophile.co.uk> wrote:
>On the other hand, check out the security/freebsd-update port and it's
>associated web site at http://www.daemonology.net/freebsd-update/ --
>this isn't an 'official' part of FreeBSD yet (surely only a matter of
>time, though).  This is a very interesting system for generating
>minimally sized binary patches that can be applied directly to a
>system without requiring a compilation step.

   I was wondering why I suddenly saw a burst of traffic. ;)

   Two notes about FreeBSD Update:
1. FreeBSD Update *SHOULD NEVER BE USED* if you have recompiled anything in 
the world.  FreeBSD Update recognizes which files need to be updated by 
their MD5 hashes; if you buildworld, FreeBSD Update may fail to recognize 
files as having been updated.  FreeBSD Update will only work properly if 
you start from a binary install from the "official" FTP or ISO distributions.
2. A couple hours ago, FreeBSD Update 1.3 entered the ports tree.  This 
version uses binary diffs to dramatically reduce the bandwidth used; 
updating a 4.7-RELEASE to the latest security fixes now uses less than half 
the bandwidth needed to cvsup from RELENG_4_7_0_RELEASE to RELENG_4_7.

Colin Percival
PS. Please CC on replies, I'm not subscribed.