Upgrade path from STABLE to RELEASE

[Mike Clarke]

On Friday 07 January 2011, Matthew Seaman wrote:

> Your choices are to backup and reinstall using a release version,
> or to grab the latest -STABLE or -RELEASE sources and upgrade by
> compiling from source.  Note that last option still won't allow you
> to use freebsd-update subsequently: you have to stick with the
> binaries from the install media for that to work.

This has got me puzzled. I appreciate that freebsd-update won't update 
the sources so an attempt to recompile after using freebsd-update to 
change between versions will lead to trouble unless the new sources are 
also downloaded but I'd assumed that freebsd-update would manage to 
update the binaries irrespective of whether they'd been installed as 
binary downloads or compiled locally.

My present system started as 8.0-RELEASE, installed as a binary from 
DVD. I subsequently used csup to upgrade through 8.1-STABLE and 
8.1-RELEASE. I've been using freebsd-update to keep 8.1-RELEASE up to 
date with the latest security patches. I didn't see any error messages 
when I ran freebsd-update so I assumed that everything went fine. Is 
there something I've overlooked and should I recompile from source to 
be safe?

-- 
Mike Clarke