[2024-feb-29] Sad news: Eric Layton aka Nocturnal Slacker aka vtel57 passed away on Feb 26th, shortly after hospitalization. He was one of our Wiki's most prominent admins. He will be missed.

Welcome to the Slackware Documentation Project

This is an old revision of the document!


Slackware-Current

Overview

Slackware -Current is essentially the testing branch of Slackware. It is similar in function to the testing branch of other distributions and the same caveats apply to -Current.

Tracking the Current Branch

To track the Current branch, it is recommended that you

  1. cleanly install or upgrade your installation to the latest stable version first, following the UPGRADE.TXT instructions found on the CD/DVD or the Slackware Linux online mirror.
  2. edit the /etc/slackpkg/mirrors file and comment out the mirror pointing to your stable version and uncomment one of the mirrors pointing to the current branch. For example, if you're using the Switzerland mirror and currently on the 13.37 stable release for Slackware 64-bit, then comment out the line
    # http://mirror.switch.ch/ftp/mirror/slackware/slackware64-13.37/

    and uncomment the line

     http://mirror.switch.ch/ftp/pool/3/mirror/slackware/slackware64-current/

    or any other mirror point to the -current branch.

  3. run the command
    slackpkg update
  4. read the ChangeLog file present in /var/lib/slackpkg/ChangeLog.txt for what applications and libraries are upgraded and which new packages are included.
  5. upgrade to the latest version in the normal fashion. See full system upgrade for more information.
Do not track the Current branch on production systems as it is a test-bed for upcoming releases. It is recommended that you use the latest stable release with the security updates instead.

 slackware:current ()