How do I know when to upgrade?

padukes · Apprentice Joined: 27 Feb 2003 Posts: 232

Hi,

When I "emerge -p world" I currently have 20-odd applications that I can upgrade. Some changes seem to be Gentoo specific:
perl-5.8.0-r10 [5.8.0-r9]

some seem to be minor point changes:
baselayout-1.8.5.9 [1.8.5.8]

and others seem to be major changes:
file-4.02 [3.41].

My system is being used as PVR and it *works* so I'd prefer to make as few changes as possible. My question is how do I know which upgrades I should make? That is, how do I determine if it is worth risking stability to upgrade item x?

My goal is to be able to quickly make decisions (perhaps 1x/week) without having to scour change logs from 20-odd apps plus 20-odd portage change logs.

Thanks,
P

pjp · Administrator Joined: 16 Apr 2002 Posts: 20067

If you don't have a need to upgrade, why bother? If the machine is linked in any way to the internet, then consider upgrading only for security reasons. Subscribe to the gentoo-announce mailing list for security related notices.
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slartibartfasz · Posted: Sat Jun 07, 2003 8:17 am Post subject:

on the other hand the ebuilds that are not marked by KEYWORD are usually fairly stable - the choice is up to u

(just as it should be with a good OS

)
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To an engineer the glass is neither half full, nor half empty - it is just twice as big as it needs to be.