Re: Moving to pkg-based in 15.1 ...

On 6/21/2026 10:01 AM, Dag-Erling Smørgrav wrote:
> Mike <the.lists@mgm51.com> writes:

>> I no longer see that easy ability to update from one patch level to
>> the current patch level within the installed version.
> 
> To upgrade a pkgbase system, simply run:
> 
>      # pkg upgrade
> 
> or, if you want to upgrade _only_ the base system and leave the rest
> untouched:
> 
>      # pkg upgrade -r FreeBSD-base
> 
> This essentially replaces `freebsd-update fetch` and `freebsd-update
> install` in your script, including the intervening prompt, and the rest
> will work as before.  If you want to get fancy, do:
> 
>      # pkg upgrade -r FreeBSD-base -Fy
> 
> to download updated packagtes without installing them, then
> 
>      # pkg upgrade -r FreeBSD-base
> 
> to prompt the user and install the downloaded packages.  This will also
> avoid a rare situation (very unlikely to occur with pkgbase on a release
> branch) where pkg computes an upgrade plan, prompts the user, then
> computes a different plan after examining the packages it downloaded and
> prompts the user a second time.
> 
> A reboot is always recommended, unless you know exactly what was updated
> and can manually restart all affected services (or you know that none of
> the services that you run are affected).  That was always the case.
> 
>> https://wiki.freebsd.org/PkgBase
> 
> This is severely out of date and (like most of the wiki) was always more
> of an internal roadmap than any sort of user documentation.
> 
> DES

Excellent!  Many thanks for that explanation.


 >> Now, as I understand the pkgbase system, it has gotten a bit more
 >> complex.
 >
 > On the contrary...
 >

I sit corrected.

Thanks again for your excellent explanation!