There has to be a better way of merging /etc during a major freebsd-update

[Miroslav Lachman]

Peter Olsson wrote on 03/10/2015 13:05:
[...]
> (I amused myself by counting all files during this stage.
> I had to answer y to about 320 files, most of which only
> had changes in the ID.)
>
> This was my first upgrade from 8.4 to 9.3. I have 30 more to go
> before the 8.4 EoL this summer. I see 30 completely unnecessarily
> wasted hours in my future...
> And think of the combined lost man hours worldwide in these upgrades!
> Merge seems to be a really stupid choice for major upgrades.
[...]

This and some other problems with freebsd-update (hanging on the reboot 
after update) turns me back to using source compiled upgrades.
I am compiling 10.1 right now to do the upgrades from 8.4 to 10.1 on 15 
machines.
Once compiled, I will NFS mount /usr/src and /usr/obj to all machines 
and will run installkernel, installworld and mergemaster with customized 
.mergemasterrc.
It is more reliable and predictable upgrade, than freebsd-update.
(I used freebsd-update for many years, but enough is enough)

Miroslav Lachman

PS: on PC-BSD there is etcupdate for merging changed files in /etc