Do I need to upgrade packages when updating from 14.2-RELEASE to 14.3-RELEASE?

[Maturin]

I DIDN'T KNEW YOU CAN SWITCH BACK TO PREVIOUS TIME BEFORE UPDATE , also is there a tutorial or documentation ?

THE HANDBOOK :

Chapter 26. Updating and Upgrading FreeBSD
[...]
26.2.2.[...]

If anything goes wrong, freebsd-update has the ability to roll back the last set of changes with the following command:

# freebsd-update rollback
Uninstalling updates... done.

 

[Erichans]

# freebsd-update rollback

I don't know the exact limitations of freebsd-update rollback but, it doesn't cover any changes of packages. In a time where for minor versions upgrades* (selected) package upgrades have become a necessity that seems more relevant than ever.

For major upgrades, 14.0R/relnotes - Upgrading from Previous Releases of FreeBSD:

The freebsd-update(8) utility requires that the host being upgraded have Internet connectivity. Note that freebsd-update cannot be used to roll back to the previous release after updating to a new major version.

The use of ZFS BEs, including its boot once option, offers far more. If you don't use ZFS be extra careful in your preparations.

___
Edit: * package upgrades for major version upgrades have always been mandatory.

 

[zirias@]

fascinating, I totally missed introduction of these repos. Good to see this annoying issue finally solved in the pragmatic way! the pedantic stance was always "ABI must be stable no matter what", which always failed in practice for KBI, so just accepting that and finding a better solution is perfect engineering spirit!

 

[mer]

freebsd-update if you are using root on ZFS, will automatically create a new Boot Environment by default (you need to specifically turn this off). The BE that gets created is BEFORE any thing gets updated, including packages, so the update happens in the current BE.

That means you should do "bectl list" every now and then, you can prune BEs that are no longer needed.