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.

I guess part of it is that I'm slightly paranoid about patches against 
freebsd-update itself, and don't entirely trust it to apply those as 
early as possible.