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Date: Thu, 16 Oct 2014 02:00:25 +0200
From: Polytropon <freebsd@edvax.de>
To: "William A. Mahaffey III" <wam@hiwaay.net>
Subject: Re: Noob question ....
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On Wed, 15 Oct 2014 18:50:59 -0500, William A. Mahaffey III wrote:
> *Aaaaaaaaack* !!!! That clarifies an important misunderstanding for me 
> .... I thought STABLE would be more/most stable, maybe a refinement on 
> RELEASE .... Thx for the clarification.

The name -STABLE is to be understood as "more stable than
-CURRENT", because when you check out the development branch,
it _might_ happen that it misbehaves or that it won't even
compile; it can also happen that an experimental feature
in -CURRENT is being removed later on.



> Also, how do I get freebsd-update to track changes ? The man page (dated 
> July 14 2010) was a bit sparse .... I would like to know if newer stuff 
> is available, & I couldn't see how to perhaps inquire about that w/ 
> freebsd-update ....

There isn't much work to do: freebsd-update does it out of the box.
Just keep in mind that you can only use it to track -RELEASE,
either follow the -RELEASE branch and add security updates, or
increase the -RELEASE version number. Dealing with a custom
kernel is also possible, but as few "custom additions" you have,
the happier freebsd-update will be. :-)

https://www.freebsd.org/doc/handbook/updating-upgrading-freebsdupdate.html

See 24.2.3. for details about program invocation.




-- 
Polytropon
Magdeburg, Germany
Happy FreeBSD user since 4.0
Andra moi ennepe, Mousa, ...