Re: Trying to understand base system packages

Johan Helsingius wrote in <642e4308-3167-45b6-8f7c-578eb377edbd@Julf.com>:
> On 10/12/2025 9:35 am, Lexi Winter wrote:
> 
> > yes, it will attempt a three-way merge.  if this fails, it will print
> > "pkg: Impossible to merge /etc/somefile" during the upgrade, and you
> > need to merge the file manually.  this message is very easy to miss, so
> > i suggest that after every upgrade, you search the entire filesystem for
> > files named '*.pkgsave' or '*.pkgnew'.
> 
> Seeing this, I thought "oh well, might as well check on my system", and
> found a bunch of *.pkgsave files, mostly in /usr/local/bin/, but also
> some in /usr/local/share/licenses/. They are all from 2021, so I
> probably don't need to worry?

if these are in /usr/local they are not related to pkgbase.

the pkg three-way merge is never performed for ports packages, because
ports are not allowed to install configuration files.  (instead, they
install @sample files which are only copied to the real location if they
don't already exist.)

they are also not related to normal ports upgrades, since ports upgrades
can never generate these files.

i'm not sure how you ended up with these files, but some possibilities:

- you manually installed some software that you also installed from
  ports, and they installed files in the same place.

- some sort of pkg or ports bug that caused files to be installed
  without being registered in pkg.  this should be impossible if you
  build ports with poudriere, but it's at least plausible that some
  sort of bug like this could exist in non-jailed builds.

if they have not been modified for four years, you are probably safe to
delete them.