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Old 1st November 2010
moosejaw moosejaw is offline
Port Guard
 
Join Date: Oct 2009
Location: Milwaukee
Posts: 12
Default Firefox and -stable ports

I am interested in running OpenBSD as my main desktop OS, after a bit of tinkering/getting used to it over the past few months. As I await the arrival of my 4.8 CDs, I'd like to ask a question / confirm what I think I understand about running Firefox on OpenBSD -stable and/or the patch branch for a particular release. (This is a question that I still have after lots of Googling and repeated readings of the official OpenBSD FAQ.)

My understanding is: if you run -release + patches, or if you run -stable, then any third-party packages or ports you run must be those that shipped with the release, or that are in the -stable ports tree. For many third-party packages, this is no problem, and there is nothing wrong with being a few months behind the bleeding edge. For Firefox, which has frequent critical security updates, getting those updates seems quite important. So here are my two questions/requests for confirmation:

1. If you run -stable, then you cannot run any version of Firefox that is newer than the one found in the -stable ports tree. This means that you rely on the maintainers of the -stable ports tree for Firefox security updates. (And I understand that -stable ports were revived last year, after a period of dormancy.)

2. Is it okay to use a patch branch system (i.e., -release + patches) with a -stable ports tree? From the FAQ, it seems that -stable doesn't introduce any major system/library changes that aren't also included in the patch branch, so I think this would be okay, but of course I could be completely off-base.

I realize OpenBSD is a small project and can't be all things to all people. My ideal scenario would be to run the patch branch, in order to avoid the frequent upgrading and possible breakage that can occur when running -current, but to have an up-to-date Firefox. Is this a reasonable thing for me to be able to expect to do? Do folks here know if Firefox is kept reasonably up to date in the -stable ports tree? Or is running -current really the only way to keep up with Firefox? Thanks in advance for any knowledge/advice you can share.
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