user feedback

Hi,

I just want to give some feedback regarding package base. I have been 
using FreeBSD personally since 4.x and professionally since 9.x, also my 
workstation is on FreeBSD since 2016 so I would say I have some 
experience with the best operating system in the world.

I have not yet had time to dig deeper into pkgbase, however, after 
reading the call for testing I just wanted to give it a go in a VM, here 
my observations with 14.3-RELEASE/15.0-BETA1 from various scenarios I 
have played through.

1.)
First I noticed I could not easily find the documentation I was looking 
for, specifically the wiki mentions that it obsoletes freebsd-update. 
man freebsd-update does not mention anything, and using pkgbasify.lua 
does not delete freebsd-update. So I now had two ways to update, which I 
find ambiguous. Also strange that "pkg update" installed kernel 
"14.3-RELEASE-p4", however, after that, a freebsd-update rolled over 
"14.3-RELEASE-p3" again, and I had no idea in what state my system was 
really after issuing both commands. (fully aware that this is not 
intended by design, but having two tools interfering and leaving us in 
an inconsistent state is awkward for us users). Strangely, also in 15.0 
freebsd-update is here.

2.)
I pkgbasified the 14.3 VM, and tried to upgrade via the method mentioned 
in the wiki. During the upgrade, the command aborted with:

[363/402] Deleting files for curl-8.16.0:   2%
pkg-static: compat-libraries-20251015101859 conflicts with 
compat-libraries-20251015101859 (installs files into the same place). 
Problematic file: /usr/local/lib/compat/pkg/libcurl.so.4
[363/402] Deleting files for curl-8.16.0: 100%
[364/402] Reinstalling brotli-1.1.0,1...
pkg-static: sqlite error while executing BEGIN IMMEDIATE TRANSACTION  in 
file pkgdb.c:1206: cannot start a transaction within a transaction

After issuing the pkg update command, the pkg upgrade command with 15.0 
ABI does not do anything. I rebooted. After that, pkg upgrade resulted in:

[12/34] Deleting files for readline-8.2.13_2:  21%
pkg: compat-libraries-20251015104532 conflicts with 
compat-libraries-20251015104532 (installs files into the same place). 
Problematic file: /usr/local/lib/compat/pkg/libhistory.so.8
[12/34] Deleting files for readline-8.2.13_2:  31%
pkg: compat-libraries-20251015104532 conflicts with 
compat-libraries-20251015104532 (installs files into the same place). 
Problematic file: /usr/local/lib/compat/pkg/libreadline.so.8
[12/34] Deleting files for readline-8.2.13_2: 100%
[13/34] Deinstalling rsync-3.4.1_3...
[13/34] Deleting files for rsync-3.4.1_3: 100%
[14/34] Reinstalling libiconv-1.17_1...
pkg: sqlite error while executing BEGIN IMMEDIATE TRANSACTION  in file 
pkgdb.c:1206: cannot start a transaction within a transaction

Confidence is not something that comes to mind here ...

3.)
I upgraded the 14.3 VM via freebsd-update to 15.0-BETA1. Then I 
pkgbasified the system. "pkg remove FreeBSD-wpa" resultet in:

Cannot solve problem using SAT solver, trying another plan
Cannot solve problem using SAT solver, trying another plan
Cannot solve problem using SAT solver, trying another plan
Cannot solve problem using SAT solver, trying another plan
Cannot solve problem using SAT solver, trying another plan
Cannot solve problem using SAT solver, trying another plan
Cannot solve problem using SAT solver, trying another plan
Checking integrity... done (0 conflicting)
1 packages requested for removal: 0 locked, 1 missing

Strange, what now?

4.) I bricked the system with "pkg delete -af", as was discussed already 
on this mailing list. This should not be possible, in my opinion.

So far I have no idea how I can upgrade to 15.0-BETA1 with a working 
pkgbase system. This short journey into pkgbase made me leave it the 
same day though what I have read sounded promising. Now I am really 
worried about the stability of my systems with 15.0 (the plan is still 
that freebsd-update only works until the 14 branch, so no support in 
15?), however I am confident it will stabilize and then I'll give it 
another shot.


Best regards,

Robert