Re: freebsd-update and pkgbase

On Wed 20 Aug 01:15, Vadim Goncharov wrote:
> On Tue, 19 Aug 2025 12:02:20 -0400
> Mark Johnston <markj@freebsd.org> wrote:
> 
> > Adding freebsd-arch@ and re@ to see if anyone not on -pkgbase has
> > opinions here.
> > 
> > On Wed, Aug 06, 2025 at 05:17:19PM -0400, Mark Johnston wrote:
> > > The future of freebsd-update post 15.0 isn't totally clear.  There have
> > > been proposals to remove it in 15.0.  IMO we can't remove it outright,
> > > since may be needed in order to upgrade 13.x and 14.x jails on a 15.0
> > > host.  It is also a shame to lose a simple upgrade utility that is
> > > well-documented and that many users are familiar with; compare
> > > "freebsd-update upgrade -r 14.3-RELEASE" with the upgrade instructions
> > > on the pkgbase wiki page.
> > > 
> > > pkgbase offers a lot of flexibility but I suspect many users don't need
> > > it; they need a one-shot "upgrade my system, please" utility that will
> > > automatically create a boot environment, configure pkg repositories as
> > > needed for major/minor/security upgrades, fetch packages, and handle
> > > package installation order (i.e., kernel first, followed by a reboot).
> 
> Of course. As was said earlier, the whole pkgbase idea in it's current form is
> harmful, leading to unexpected breakages etc. after mass deployment, not
> mentioning not very good quality of pkg itself.

About pkg quality, there is a way to improve that: report issues, contribute
code, contribute unit tests etc.
> 
> The whole distinction between base and ports (packages) is (was) major FreeBSD
> strength, compared to Linux distros or just plain "zfs delete /usr/local" if
> something goes wrong.
> 
> May be freebsd-update will be redone to be just a frontend to pkg, may be
> some other way, but the whole wall between base and ports must continue to
> exist.
> I think it probably should be even special fork of pkg(8) for pkgbase, just as
> private (renamed) versions of some ports libraries exist in the base (like
> sqlite or expat).
sqlite is made to be bundled, in particular we are carefully cherrypicking
features, as for expat, pkg does not use expat at all for years (removed in
2020).

Best regards,
Bapt