When you follow -current, keep a close eye on OpenBSD’s changes by tracking the Following -current web page at http://www.OpenBSD.org/faq/current.html. This is where the OpenBSD developers list all of the changes likely to impact people trying to build -current. Not all changes apply to all systems, but any change listed that applies to your system requires special handling.

The entries are chronological, and include everything since the last release. Just concern yourself with entries dated on or after the date of the source code used to build your snapshot. For example, if you built a snapshot dated January 30, and you want to build -current on the following February 5, check the web page for any entries between those two dates, inclusive. Earlier changes are already incorporated in the installed snapshot.

Some changes will require your intervention before you even try to build the system. For example, if you have new unprivileged usernames, they will need to be in place before a make build can succeed—after all, a program owned by user _fdisk can’t be installed unless that user is in place.

If you don’t understand an entry on this page, do not upgrade!

When you upgrade to a new -stable, you can be sure that the files in /etc/ haven’t changed. When you track -current, those critical system files might well change. Any critical changes are usually noted in the Following -current website, but it’s best to use sysmerge(8) to merge in all /etc changes. You can give sysmerge the path to the system source instead of the etc.tgz file set.

# sysmerge -s /usr/src

See the section about sysmerge earlier in this chapter for detailed information.