Re: Customize what packages get installed

> On 12 Dec 2025, at 00:48, Lexi Winter <ivy@freebsd.org> wrote:
> 
> Peter Ankerstål wrote in <A83ED87A-DA17-4B44-803B-A7EEC5176634@pean.org>:
>> When using freebsd-update and there is a new patchlevel only the
>> affected files are updated. Lets say the patchlevel only contains a
>> fix for unbound. Then freebsd-update will only download and install
>> unbound-files.
>> 
>> But when moving from one patchlevel to another using pkgbase all
>> installed packages from FreeBSD-base will be updated. But it would
>> have been enough to just upgrade the FreeBSD-unbound package.
> 
> no, this isn't how it works.  are you using pkg.freebsd.org packages
> or building your own packages?
> 
> if you're building your own packages, use "make update-packages",
> not "make packages".  that will copy unchanged packages from the
> previous build, so that the version number doesn't change and
> pkg won't upgrade them.
> 
> if you're using pkg.freebsd.org packages, there are only two
> explanations i can think of for this behaviour:
> 
> - you are tracking CURRENT, and only update relatively infrequently;
>  because the value of __FreeBSD_version is encoded in the ELF header
>  of every executable, any time that value is bumped, you will need
>  to update nearly all packages.  this can happen several times per
>  week during periods of high code churn.
> 
>  this is correct behaviour, because the executables have changed
>  and need to be updated.  (you could debate whether it's really
>  necessary to encode this particular value in the ELF header,
>  though; but that's not a pkgbase issue.)
> 
> - you updated past a point where the pkg.freebsd.org repository was
>  rebuilt from scratch.  as far as i know, this has only happened
>  once in recent memory, and that was a couple of months ago, so
>  this would only be the cause of your issue if you almost never
>  update and ignore security issues.
> 
> if neither of these explanations seem plausible, please record the
> output of 'pkg upgrade' the next time you run it, and post it here,
> because the behaviour you are observing is not intentional.
> <signature.asc>

Thanks for your thorough explanation! Im using pkg.freebsd.org but I dont have
the logs from the particular upgrade. It was 14.3pX -> 14.3p6 at least.
 
I will keep track of how upgrades behave in the future and post them here if I observe the same behavior again.
 
/Peter