Patch packages?

[William Yodlowsky <wyodlows_(_at_)_nj_(_dot_)_devry_(_dot_)_edu>]

As I upgraded several boxes to 2.7 I began to think about the patch
distribution process.

OK, before I go any further this is not intended to be flamebait.  If I've
missed something obvious (and most times I do) then please do me the favor
of letting me know this in private :-)

The Patch Branch is cool.  But if you're on a slow connection (or have a
slow machine) downloading and rebuilding the entire OS can be a
bit... much.

Then again applying the 20+ individual patches (for i386 for example) by
hand and rebuilding select parts of the OS isn't fun either, though more
manageable in my situation.

So what I was thinking is "patch packages"... you would use pkg_add to
install the patched binaries.  That way you'd know what patches are
installed (via pkg_info) and it would definitely shorten the amount of
time it takes to do several boxes.

I realize a lot of patches are for the kernel.  I'm not sure how that
should be handled... but that's why I'm throwing this out here :)

So, what have I overlooked?  :-)

   _____
 ,' ___ `.                                           William Yodlowsky
 | |   | |                                       wyodlows_(_at_)_nj_(_dot_)_devry_(_dot_)_edu
_'_|___|_`_   Security
|         |            First,
|         |                   Last,
|_________|                         and
| OpenBSD |                             Always
`---------'                                    http://www.openbsd.org/