Alright, thanks for being ever-so-helpful. I'll do my best to compile my understanding of the system taking into account the response that is accumulated here.
As Mr. Grosse points out (and I was originally aware of it), using snapshot userspace provides only an approximation of current userspace without any guarantees that snapshots are "up to date enough". That being said, it's a common practice to use -current with binary packages. This is supported by experience of several BSD users and isn't considered to be bad practice. Which measures should one take while using -current kernel with snapshot userspace? 1. Know your mirror: A person who wants to do that should find out the policies of making snapshots for a particular mirror. 2. Always keep bsd.rd in / System running -current kernel with snapshots are even less stable than one running -current and using fully compiled userspace from ports source tree. 3. Shake, don't mix If one commits to usage of -current kernel with snapshot ports, best effort should be put in avoiding port compilation. 4. pkg_add -U shouldn't be used Partial update of the system is dangerous and as we don't have control over the source of snapshots, an upgrade followed by full update should be done as a part of installation of new package. 5. Sets should be updated from a fresh bsd.rd Ditto. Reference reading material: man sysmerge man dpb ---- Now that I think about it, I realize that it's unlikely that I'll keep using this weird "build kernel, download pkgs" combination and will simply do snapshot hopping by means of upgrade/sysmerge. Thank you all, response was astonishing.
