Good point, Ocicat. -stable is not an upgrade, it is -release, plus a careful collection of patches. Only patches that affect security or reliability are included -- there is no new functionality, and no library changes. The advantage is that -release and -stable are interchangeable. -release packages may be added to -stable systems, and -stable packages to -release systems. Yes, -stable packages used to be available. At one time, ports with security fixes were added to the -stable ports tree, and -stable packages were built and added to the package mirrors.
Currently, this is not done, due to resource constraints. But it may happen again, in the future.
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