cvsup newbie questions

[Joshua Tinnin]

Whoops ... I misunderstood you ...

On Friday 17 December 2004 02:58 pm, Joshua Tinnin 
<krinklyfig at spymac.com> wrote:
> On Friday 17 December 2004 01:11 pm, Kevin Smith
> <smithcam at adelphia.net> wrote:
<snip>
> > So, if I am just interested in the latest fixes/version for
> > applications running on 5.3-Release, should I just upgrade the
> > ports collection ?
>
> No, the ports collection is the collection of 3rd-party apps'
> Makefiles and patches - it just simplifies installing applications.

So, yes, if you're just interested in fixes for apps, then update the 
ports collection. Still, I recommend updating to the latest sources for 
any RELEASE, as most of the time the fixes are truly important for most 
users, and they won't disrupt your system other than the actual 
building and installing (well, if it can possibly be avoided, but in 
this case you won't notice any difference). Also, once you have the 
source, then updating with src-all with your RELEASE tag will only 
update critical fixes, not all the sources over again. It's also 
possible to patch your system manually by fine-tuning the sources you 
want with cvsup and then just rebuilding that part, or without using 
cvsup at all (using patch(1)), but if you're not familiar with that, 
then start with updating the complete system through these steps 
(briefly): cvsup your source, mergemaster -p, buildworld, build kernel, 
install kernel, reboot into single user, installworld and mergemaster. 
It's a bit of a trick the first time if you're not familiar with it, 
but the handbook walks you through it, and it's not as scary as it 
might sound. Just do it exactly the way they say, and *don't skip 
anything*, and you should be fine. If not, you can always ask here. 
BTW, I personally recommend not using the -j switch when doing 
buildworld. The handbook warns that it's not supported, although plenty 
of people use it anyway and later come here with related problems, so 
it might save headaches if you don't mess with it until and unless you 
want to try it for testing.

- jt