Questions about freebsd-update

[Quartz]

>> The main rationale here is that updates can occasionally cause behavior
>> changes which can negatively interact with 3rd party software.
>
> This is correct, but so can selectively applying updates...

FWIW, I'm not really too concerned with the ability to apply patches 
piecemeal. Applying them all in order is fine as long as it's one at a 
time. Although my last email used the example 'freebsd-update install 
patch_file', some flavor of 'freebsd-update install 
specific_date_or_revision' would work too for this case.