Re: user feedback

infoomatic wrote in <06f829a7-4378-4a24-a3db-f929d812cddd@gmx.at>:
> I just want to give some feedback regarding package base.

thank for you taking the time to provide feedback.  however, i'm afraid
feedback on 14.x pkgbase is not very helpful, since pkgbase has changed
significantly in 15.0.  pkgbase in 14.x is essentially an unsupported
experimental feature.

> First I noticed I could not easily find the documentation I was looking for,

for 15.0, we should have Handbook documentation describing pkgbase.
currently, we do not.  

> using pkgbasify.lua does not > delete freebsd-update

it cannot do so, because you might still want freebsd-update to update
non-pkgbase jails.

>  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.

do not use freebsd-update and pkgbase on the same system.  i believe
freebsd-update was recently fixed to refuse to run in this configuration,
but the fix might not have made it to a -RELEASE branch yet.

> Strangely, also in 15.0 freebsd-update is here.

again, this will be required for people who want to update 14.x jails
which don't use pkgbase.

> 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

this is https://github.com/freebsd/pkg/issues/2501: pkg(8)
BACKUP_LIBRARIES is known to be broken, both in general and with
pkgbase.  this is on the list of issues to fix prior to 15.0-RELEASE.

> 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

this is https://github.com/freebsd/pkg/issues/2517.  this issue is also
on the list of known issues to be fixed for 15.0.  in short, if you have
a FreeBSD-set-* package installed, you need to remove the set before you
can remove the contents of the set.

> 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.
 
i do not know what else you expected here.  if you remove the base system,
then the system can no longer boot, because you removed it.  the solution
is to not do that.

as an aside, i am confused about the number of people who seem to run
"pkg delete -af" as a matter of course.  where did you learn to do this?
is there some FreeBSD YouTuber telling people to do this?

> the plan is still that freebsd-update only works until the 14 branch,
> so no support in 15?

freebsd-update will be fully supported in 15.x and is planned to be
removed for 16.0.  in 15.0, pkgbase is shipped as a "tech preview"
feature.