Tracking changes in stable

[Bill]

Hello,

I've got what is probably an obvious question to some, but I basically need a sanity check on this.

For several new boxes, and upgrading others, we track the stable branch.  We compile and build releases that we then install around the company, home, etc, etc.

I can find tons of information on upgrading from one release to another, but not much on within a release.  For example, recently we deployed two machines with 4.0 stable up to patch 009.  The next day (of course) patch 010 comes out. 

Now if I compile it, can I just drop the tgz's over the file system?  (Not etc obviously).  I can take a look at the patches to see if they would effect other parts of the system, but not everything is documented in the patches.  So I can do a CVS diff between what I have and what's new...

Is this the optimal way?  What am I forgetting? 

Thanks for any advice.