portugrade using packages

[mcassar]

I don't know if you ppl consider this an issue, and what you would do if 
so, so here goes.

Over a month ago i had posted asking a few questions about maintaining 
the base system and ports/packages and got some clarification and info 
on the different tools. (at the time i didn't know the difference 
between release and stable).
I still had some confusion till i later realised that most of you long 
time user of freebsd must surely be on stable, and only after i heard 
mention that kde4.1 was available as packages and i could get them for 
the life of me (later found a related mention in the handbook - if not 
mistaken; latest packages are available to stable for security reasons).

Anyway, this came up when trying to use portupgrade with -arPP on 
Release with xorg and kde installed off the install disks and after a 
portsnap. portupgrade would first fetch/download the latest package 
under release, then find it is the same version as installed, and so 
forth with each installed package, instead of comparing versions first. 
i was about to leave it unattended but stopped it after the first few 
assuming that was the case and was watching my internet usage. ( there 
were around 350 packages to update).

I am not entirely sure this is the case, just assumed. i had forgotten, 
since i tried stable and got most of them via packages, but today it 
seemed to happen on a single package at least. don't know if this is 
something ppl would like to look into.