Re: Clarification on future support for FreeBSD distribution sets

Sad Clouds wrote in <20251207091150.12eaa037203456f80c33255e@gmail.com>:
> "Support for distribution sets is planned for removal in FreeBSD 16, but
> will continue (along with freebsd-update support) for the lifetime of
> the FreeBSD 15 stable branch."
> 
> If the above refers to deprecating freebsd-update and removing
> distribution sets from bsdinstall(8) then this sounds reasonable.
> 
> On the other hand, if the above also refers to removing support for
> distribution sets from all Makefiles then this is not very good.

we will not remove support for building media with distribution sets
from the release Makefiles, because downstream users (e.g., CHERI)
haven't switched to pkgbase yet and still need dist set support.

what will change in 16 is that we will no longer provide dist sets
for download or on the installer media; the only supported method
to install the system will be with pkgbase.

for users who prefer to update using make installworld, there will
be a way to depkgbasify the system during installation.