Keeping Updated

[Paul Stewart]

Hi there.

 

I'm sorry if this seems like a basic question but slowly drifting back to
the FreeBSD world after 10 years away in the Linux world ;)

 

After some consideration, I believe I still like the idea of source based
updating versus binary.

 

This raises my first question - getting updating source. Where do I obtain
it from and how do I know when it's updated?  I presume only during major
updates/upgrades and/or security issues is when the source tree ever
changes?

 

I understand (or believe I do) on the whole "make buildworld", "make
installworld", "mergemaster -v" steps unless anything has changed in
7.2-RELEASE that I need to know about.  I also remember how to build my own
kernels and see that you can now do "make buildkernel KERNCONF=NEWKERNEL"
and "make installkernel KERNCONF=NEWKERNEL" which is nice too.

 

With that aside, I've been running "portsnap update" to keep the ports
updated.. am I missing anything here?  I presume that when portsnap finds an
updated port then I just need to rebuild it and upgrade?

 

I guess I'm kinda wondering the "condensed quick version" of what people are
typically doing to keep their system updated from source without making life
difficult ;)  Yes, I've been reading through various things to get myself
updated to newer info but there's also a lot of stuff on the Internet based
on older info hence why I'm asking.

 

Cheers,

 

Paul