> What is the best procedure for upgrading from source?

It depends.  Mostly, in my experience, it depends on how big a jump
you're trying to make.

I recently did a three-month jump, from the sup of 1999-05-13 to the
sup of 1999-08-13.  This particular three-month jump involved a lot of
changes, and it took careful tapdancing.  I was very glad I did it in a
chrooted area, because it took several tries to get it right, and many
of the early failures would have left me with an unbootable system if
done on the boot tree.

On the other hand, I've also done upgrades from source that are as
simple as building and booting a new kernel and then basically just
"cd /usr/src; make build".

I would say that if you have to ask the question, you probably are best
off upgrading by installing a snapshot and then doing the source-build
route.  (Unless you're upgrading to a release, in which case just
install the release.)  This of course is where "best off" is assuming
you just want a working system in place as painlessly as possible.  If
you're specifically trying to learn how to do upgrades from source,
then by all means dive in.  But I strongly recommend either another
system for use as a rescue system (move the disk and reinstall the
known-good system) or doing the work in a chrooted area.

					der Mouse

			       mouse@rodents.montreal.qc.ca
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