"Thomas Mueller" <mueller6724%bellsouth.net@localhost> writes: > What is the reason for both pkgsrc current and quarterly? Is there a > big difference in the stability of the pkgsrc structure itself? I > think it would be about the same. > > I am strongly inclined to go with the current version because I don't > see any advantage in waiting three months after release of a software > application, such as Abiword, gnpumeric or Seamonkey just because it > was released just after the quarterly pkgsrc. > > FreeBSD ports collection has no separate current and quarterly > versions. Do any other source-based package managers have distinct > current and quarterly versions? pkgsrc infrastructure itself is very stable. The real issue is that upstream code is not all stable, and that often when something large is updated (e.g. gtk2+) there is fallout as it forces updates to many programs which should have stopped using deprecated APIs two years ago but haven't until they really are gone. So if you are building from source, and HEAD pkgsrc is working for you, by all means use it. I do this on several machines. But if you don't want to spend time updating, and would prefer to do that once a quarter, and then only on bits that other people think are in very good shape, grab a quarterly release and wait until a few weeks after the branch/freeze is over and then move to it. This is basically the same issue about running netbsd-5 vs current, except that pkgsrc stable is more frequently updated and pkgsrc HEAD is not quite as scary.
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