Does anyone know of any good, maintained apps that will automatically sync my system with the slackware-current tree? That way I'll always be up to date and, in theory, I should never have to reinstall Slackware.

Try slackpkg, it is easy, good and maintened
After installing it and choose a current mirror in /etc/slackpkg/mirrors file,
put aaa_base, aaa_elflibs, kernel-headers, kernel-ide, kernel-modules and kernel-source
in /etc/slackpkg/blacklist, you just run slackpkg update && slackpkg upgrade-all
and your system is current

Can slackpkg use the official slackware-current tree?

You can set slackpkg to use 10.0 or 10.1 or current, whatever you want
By default there is no "current" mirror in the /etc/slackpkg/mirrors file. But you could just change your favorite mirror in that file to use the current-tree

http://yourfavoritemirror/slackware/slackware-current/

slackpkg comes with slackware, it's in /extra (on one of the cd's).
slackpkg only updates official slackware packages (that's why I use it )

Excellent! That sounds like exactly what I want.

Thanks

Just for information, Slackware-current is the development version of Slackware Linux : it targets experienced (Slackware) Linux users who are able to provide good feedback. Due to its development state, sometimes Slackware-current has bugs with which you probably do not want to deal.

-- LiNuCe

Doing daily syncs with Slackware current would be a pretty bad idea, unless you had first read the changelogs and really knew what you were getting into.

You would be better off waiting until Slackware 10.2 is out, and sync up to that. Even though current is frozen at the moment (for testing to become 10.2) the general idea is that you should only sync up to a stable release, unless you are willing to manually repair your system if something goes wrong.

Ok. I'll heed your warnings. In which case I'll leave my system as it is, with the current slackware-current and then upgrade to 10.2 when it's released.

Yep, that's correct.

I always like to keep my servers up to date by syncing them with slackware-stable (10.1 for now). But I sync "all" my clients with current, never had a problem but if I do it won't be a big problem

rsync is used to sync servers but I see you want to actually have the new beta junk installed. probably better off with slackpkg or swaret or something.

Beta? I'm sorry but I'm not sure of what you mean. All the stuff in current is marked stable by the developers of those projects. I don't see any CVS packages in slackware. That doesn't mean your stuff won't get screwed up if you install some current package that might have a problem. If thats the case there is usually a fix by the next day or two from Pat. And that doesn't happen all too often. Current is not "bleeding edge" by any means but it is up-to-date software packages.

I think that it is fairly clear what is meant. Though the software contained in Slcakware -current is marked as stable by the developers, it's implementation is Beta. Beta, as in PV is testing the implementation before release. Udev is a good example of this. It breaks often (relative to other Slackware -current packages). Solutions that PV considers (as evidenced by the changelog) include both re-packaging (with alternate configuration) and downgrading (if alternate configurations do not resolve issues).

By releasing Slackware -current, PV is able to get help from the Slackware community. The SLackware community membersa are able to install the Slackware -current packages and test them. Many of the fixes in -current are supplied by those members of the Slackware community.

In all, I think this fits the definition of Beta. Everyone is free to install the Slackware -current packages. Breakage is too be expected, though. If you are inexperienced, the breakage is just that; breakage. If you have some Linux/programming/debugging/scripting/packaging/etc. experience, though, the breakage is an opportunity for you to help improve the next Slackware release by:

A) Noting the issue
B) Resolving the issue
C) Passing the information along to PV for consideration

In short summary, I would look at the term "Beta" in relation to Slackware -current as meaning, "The Beta version of the next Slackware release," not as, "The Slackware version containing Beta software."