Hi Tony, Tony Sidaway wrote on Wed, Jun 20, 2012 at 01:00:21AM +0100:
> Summary: I want to turn my main system into a semi-automatic follower > of "-current" and I think this strategy may useful to the project. Is > this something that is already being done? No. The main reason being that following -current just isn't semi-automatic. There are times when updating is quite safe (like, usually). There are times when updating is more risky (say, near the end of a large or invasive hackathon, or when art@ just committed some three-line diff). There are times when updating requires special changes to be applied manually, see faq/current.html. Nobody can tell you whether, at any given time, it's a good time to update *your* particular machine or whether you should better wait a few days for some dust to settle. Running -current means that you should be able to judge that for yourself, depending on what you are using that particular machine for. On a workstation, it probably doesn't matter. If you misjudge and it breaks, well, you fix it. On a critical production server that makes your boss panic when you break it, you shouldn't run -current unless you feel confident that you can properly judge when to update (and when not to). > The idea is that the system regularly (nightly) synchronizes all > three main source directories, then rebuilds and installs Gah. No! When updating a -current system for a user, use snapshots, do not build from source. When implemented as perfectly as possible, the process you are proposing will work in most cases, but occasionally, it will leave you with a badly broken system. Updating from source cannot be fully automated. Feel free to fool around with compiling from source for experimentation and learning, but don't rely on it for production. > I'm interested in helping OpenBSD in any way I can. Look out for anything that gets in your way (bugs, missing features). Try to fix those and send patches. Start with small and simple things. Do not try to change the whole system all at once. Do not start by changing the build system. Yours, Ingo