possibly silly question regarding freebsd-update

[Doug McIntyre]

On Tue, Mar 30, 2021 at 05:54:03PM +0100, tech-lists wrote:
> it just threw me that the thing-that-was-updated didn't update its
> version information when queried. Absent sources, how can I tell it 
> was updated (apart from freebsd-version -u) ?

Comparing what the SA patch says it is doing at
https://security.freebsd.org/patches/SA-21:07/openssl-12.patch
appears to be only update the libcrypto library and not the openssl wrapper itself, you can
verify that after the 12.2-p5 patch was installed that the file 

 /lib/libcrypto.so.111

has been touched and is a newer date than what was on the machine prior to the patch.

Yes, this takes some knowledge of the specific patch, and what parts
contribute to what it is doing.

I don't know the specific decisions on when RELEASE backports security
patches vs. upgrading whole source trees.